When the Donald Trump presidential campaign began, his blunt remarks delivered with typical Trump hyperbole about illegal immigrants crossing the border resulted in widespread predictions that the "racism" he displayed had doomed any chance he might have had. But it didn't. Same thing happened late in his campaign with charges of sexism.
We then saw the legion of Trump-haters, aided by the deep state and corruption at the highest levels of the FBI and DOJ, move on to the fake Russian collusion narrative. That didn't work, so the charge became obstruction, which also has no legs to stand on. Then questions of his mental stability and ability came to the fore, greatly abetted for a brief flurry of hysteria over a tabloid book by an author known for inaccuracies and invented quotations and scenarios. Trump pretty much shot that down in one fell swoop with his masterful open press meeting on immigration.
Now it looks like we are back to racism - a card the Democrats and the left always pull out against Republicans and they have played it like never before against Trump, the same as they have attacked and smeared him as never before on a multitude of accusations and smears. Prediction, this too will pass - but not before the Democrats and their left wing media tools play it up as loudly and longly as they can and pretend outrage.
Outrage? Just the opposite - the Trump-haters are absolutley delighted to have yet another issue, even if a retread, to use to try to hang around Trump's neck in their desperate attempt to take back the House and dream of taking back the Senate and taking down Trump. And please, dear readers and viewers, whatever you do don't pay any attention to all the good things that have been accomplished or your bigger paychecks, bonuses and rising wages!
What dismays me is that Trump appears to have handed the the cudgel they are trying to use to beat him over the head with in yet another unforced error that has stepped all over good news and momentum from only days earlier. It has become an all too familiar pattern with blunt spoken and politically incorrect Trump, who is not a seasoned politician and who lets his thoughts flow out without thought to their consequences.
Trump should have known better - should have known that his opponents are waiting to blow up anything he says or does and would have literally rushed out of the private meeting in the Oval Office to condemn whatever it was he actually said when he was frustrated over a disingenuous solution the Dems and RINO's brought to him which only gave him a mere $1.5 Billion token towards a border wall, more chain migration he vowed to curtail and Visa lottery carve-outs for unskilled, uneducated and possibly criminal immigrants from corrupt dysfunctional countries which flies in the face of the merit-based immigration Trump wanted.
Did he really use the term "sh*thole" to describe such countries? Perhaps - and if he did, he was merely speaking the blunt truth because that is what those countries are. Not their people, mind you, but the countries. And don't forget that the countries get to choose who gets entered in their immigration lotteries. You can bet that they don't enter names of those they want to keep, such as their most educated, most talented and most skilled. You can also bet that in many instances they enter the names of those they most want to get rid of.
But the "sh*thole" countries have mostly brown populations, and thus the charge of racism. Now, I don't believe that Trump is a racist any more than I believe that he is mentally unfit to govern or to have his finger on the nuclear button. But it appears that he gave his opponents an opening to renew the charges when he should have known better.
What Trump should do is make a statement to the effect that he was condemning the countries themselves, not their people, and say that their are many fine hard working immigrants from those countries and say that he was merely trying to point out that he wanted to see more merit-based immigration which would benefit our country and our people - and then let the issue die down without further comment. I have my doubts if he will do so, however. Time and again, Trump has demonstrated that he does not handle criticism well, not even the smallest amount of criticism from sources than should be well beneath the attention of a President.
I doubt that Trump's remarks or his reaction will have much of any effect on his base, who will likely say that this is just Trump being Trump. And I agree - it is indeed that. Trump is his own best spokesman. Unfortunately, his is sometimes his own worst enemy.
My two cents.