Trump again says he’s the “least racist” person there is

Not only does President Donald Trump claim he is not racist — he says he is probably one of the “least racist” people out there.

The president on Sunday, amid reports that he referred to some foreign places — namely, Haiti, El Salvador and countries in Africa — as “shithole” countries, denied such remarks and said charges of racism against him were unfair. “No, no, I’m not a racist,” Trump said, according to a pool report and transcripts released by the White House. “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you.”

After a meeting with legislators on immigration this week, reports emerged that Trump complained about why the United States admits people from what he deems “shithole countries.” The reported remarks sparked fierce backlash. The Washington Post was first was first to report the remarks, which NBC News later confirmed.

Many slammed Trump’s reported remarks as racist, noting that the president reportedly suggested the US take more people from “countries like Norway,” where the population is predominantly white, as opposed to Haiti and Africa. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) said in a Sunday interview with ABC’s This Week of Trump, “I think he is a racist.”

Trump on Sunday denied that he made the “shithole” remarks, though some lawmakers in the room during the meeting have confirmed them. (Trump was reportedly meeting with lawmakers about a deal on immigration and the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals program when he made the statement.)

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who attended the meeting, has publicly confirmed Trump’s “shithole” remarks, saying the president did indeed say “these hate-filled things and he said them repeatedly.” Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) told the Post and Courier that Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was also in the meeting, told him Trump’s reported comments were “basically accurate.”

Others in attendance have said they don’t remember what Trump said — namely, Republican Sens. David Perdue (R-GA) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. “I don’t recall him saying that exact phrase. I think he has been clear, and I think undoubtedly the president will continue to use strong language when it comes to this issue, because he feels very passionate about it,” Nielsen said in an interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.

Many aren’t picking up what Trump and his defenders are putting down. They’re instead pointing to the “shithole” remarks as even more evidence of the president’s racism, which includes calling for a group of young black and Latino men to face the death penalty for a rape accusation they were eventually exonerated from to his insistence that some neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer were “very fine people.”

And as Ana Minian, an assistant professor of history at Stanford University and author of the forthcoming book Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration, recently explained to Vox’s Jen Kirby, Trump’s reported remarks go beyond their racist undertones:

I think racism is a big part of it, but I don’t think it’s just plain racism. I think it’s how racism has been connected with immigration to stoke nativist fears. So, fears of unemployment, fears that our culture will change, fears that disease is coming. AIDS, for example, with Haiti. All these fears are stoked upon through immigration. So is it racism? Yes. But it’s a racism that is very much attached to the fears that people already have.

Trump also previously complained that immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS,” according to the New York Times.

Trump has denied all charges of racism, and has on various occasions said he is the least biased person on the planet. For example, in February 2017 he said at a press conference that he is the “least racist person” there is. He followed up by asking a black reporter whether she was friends with the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and if she could set up a meeting.