Homeless in Arizona

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Emperor Donald Trump continues to remind me of Arizona's goofy governor Ev Mecham. Ev Mecham was inditided, impeached and recalled.

Remember when Evan Mecham referred to Black people as p*ckan*nn*es?

I think Evan Mecham was eventually impeached.

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Trump appears to deny using vulgar term to describe immigrant countries after backlash

David Jackson, USA TODAY Published 5:53 a.m. MT Jan. 12, 2018 | Updated 9:06 a.m. MT Jan. 12, 2018

WASHINGTON – After international and congressional backlash, President Trump appeared Friday to deny using a vulgar term to describe Haiti, El Salvador and African countries, and instead sought to redirect the focus on what he called unacceptable Democratic proposals on immigration.

"The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used," Trump tweeted. "What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made - a big setback for DACA!"

The attempt to clarify came after The Washington Post reported that Trump questioned in a meeting with lawmakers on Thursday why the U.S. would accept immigrants from "shithole countries" like Haiti or in Africa rather than in places like Norway. Trump had met the previous day with the prime minister of Norway.

"Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" Trump reportedly told lawmakers during negotiations over DACA: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program designed to block deportation of young people brought to the United States illegally by their parents.

In a subsequent tweet, Trump denied saying anything derogatory of Haiti in particular. "Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country," he said, and suggested he would record future meetings.

Trump has threatened to kill the DACA program unless Democrats agree to a host of new security measures designed to block illegal immigration, including a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Yet upcoming negotiations between the White House and Congress on immigration are likely to be shadowed by the reported presidential comments, which some lawmakers and human rights officials denounced as racist.

"The President’s statement is shameful, abhorrent, unpresidental, and deserves our strongest condemnation," said Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. "We must use our voices to ensure that our nation never returns to the days when ignorance, prejudice, and racism dictated our decision making."

Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, a daughter of Haitian immigrants, demanded Trump apologize, calling his comments "unkind, divisive, (and) elitist," and that they "fly in the face of our nation’s values."

The government of Haiti has demanded that U.S. officials provide an explanation of the president's remarks.

Rupert Colville, a human rights spokesman for the United Nations, said: "If confirmed, these are shocking and shameful comments from the president of the United States, I'm sorry but there is no other word for this but racist."

During his Friday tweet storm, Trump also rejected a bipartisan congressional proposal on DACA, saying it lacked funding for the U.S.-Mexico wall and did not end programs like "chain migration."

The president's criticism came a day after discussing immigration ideas with a bipartisan delegation that included Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

While some Republicans supported various compromise proposals, Trump put the blame on Democrats.

Saying he wanted a "merit based" immigration system that blocks drug dealers and criminals, Trump said the bipartisan proposal would somehow force the United States to "take large numbers of people from high crime countries which are doing badly."

Democrats said Trump's goal, reflected in his alleged comment, is to allow immigration from predominantly white countries and block it from predominately black and brown countries.

Some congressional Democrats have threatened to block a new government spending plan unless the DACA program for young people is addressed, risking a government shutdown that also drew Trump's ire.

"Sadly, Democrats want to stop paying our troops and government workers in order to give a sweetheart deal, not a fair deal, for DACA," Trump tweeted. "Take care of our Military, and our Country, FIRST!"

If it happens, a government shutdown would not cut off funding for troops or military operations; only non-essential personnel would be affected.

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Donald Trump, the news media, and profanity: What comes next?

Bill Goodykoontz, USA TODAY NETWORK Published 8:03 a.m. MT Jan. 12, 2018 | Updated 9:25 a.m. MT Jan. 12, 2018

What’s left?

I was at my son’s basketball game Thursday night, a few hours after President Donald Trump, during a meeting with lawmakers in the Oval Office, reportedly said, “Why are we having all these people from these shithole countries come here?”

He was referring to Haiti, El Salvador and African countries; it was part of a discussion about protecting immigrants.

I checked my Twitter feed, and the reaction continued to be predictably incendiary. Everyone seemed to think it was a new low for a president who has made a habit out of digging deeper basements in the country’s moral standards. I don’t know, I thought the term he used to describe a woman’s genitals in the recording that came to light during the campaign was worse, but that’s just me.

Then I saw a tweet that put the whole thing into the weird perspective it deserves. It was from Dan Barry, a New York Times writer, who tweeted, “According to Times style, a ‘shithole’ is not hyphenated. Nor is it capitalized. It is, simply, ‘shithole,’ and can be used as both a noun (‘shithole’) and adjective (‘shithole countries’).”

So here we are. The New York Times has worked out a particular usage for this kind of thing. And we have one man to thank for it.

I think this is what we call "normalization."

It's a rocky transition for the media, as it should be.

Yes, elected officials have used vulgar language before, typically in a didn't-know-the-mic-was-hot way. This is different.

This was the president of the United States in a room full of lawmakers — not exactly the cone of silence — using language that I'd punish my children for. And as Barry's tweet suggests, it put media outlets in the odd position of having to figure out just how foul the language of the President we are willing to use.

THE PRESIDENT.

Someone posted a weird thing on my Facebook timeline. “No worse than the language we hear everyday from Hollywood? In fact this term is pretty lame in comparison.”

Maybe. There’s just the one little difference: NO ONE IN HOLLYWOOD IS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Yes, people say inelegant and offensive things all the time. I know for a fact that The Arizona Republic has printed a similar expletive. I wrote it. I spelled the word “shirt” without the R, and it ran in the paper.

That, of course, was a mistake. Trump’s language was not. And, for the 10,000 time since this administration began, we are reminded: words matter. Especially when they’re coming out of the President’s mouth (or show up in his Twitter feed).

Most news networks and many newspapers and websites ran the word.

Most decried it as course and unfitting language for a president at best, straight-up racist at worst.

Except for some folks at Fox News, who naturally tried to defend it. That’s a strange shop they’re running over there.

“I think it’s either fake news or, if it’s true, this is how the forgotten men and women in America talk at the bar,” Jesse Watters said on “The Five.” “This is how Trump relates to people.”

So what? Maybe he needs to try to relate to different people. At the very least Watters needs to frequent different bars.

To circle back to where we started: What’s next? How low can we go? I can think of a few words more offensive. My inclination is to think, no, no, that’ll never happen, he won’t say those around other people, particularly lawmakers or other people with whom he interacts in an official capacity. It’s just too much. Some things just go too far.

And seemingly every day I’m proven wrong.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

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