The following article by John Bowden was posted on the Hill website January 14, 2018:
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said Sunday that President Trump has revealed himself to be racist with reported comments calling Haiti, El Salvador and several African nations “shithole countries.”
“In every respect what he is showing us is that he is a racist,” Becerra said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“Let me put it to you this way,” the former congressman continued. “Mental instability, mendacity, now bigotry, having any one of those in the White House is dangerous, having the combination, that’s lethal.”
Becerra, a top critic of the Trump administration, has battled with the White House before on issues of immigration, health care and the environment. He joined other California Democrats last week in criticizing Trump over comments reportedly made Thursday during a bipartisan meeting on immigration with lawmakers in the White House.
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump reportedly said, apparently referring to immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations.
Trump reportedly went on to question why the U.S. wasn’t admitting more immigrants from Norway, whose prime minister Trump recently met.
Other California Democrats called the comments disgraceful, with the state’s lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, calling for the president’s resignation in a Facebook post and Rep. Maxine Waters calling for impeachment.
“You’re a joke and a racist, President Donald J. Trump,” Newsom wrote on Facebook. “Resign.”
“No longer can Members of Congress, particularly Republicans, stand with such a dangerous, disturbed, and deceitful man who is a threat to everything for which America, the greatest democracy on earth, stands,” Waters said in a statement. “Congress has a constitutional responsibility to impeach him without delay.”
View the post here.