President Donald Trump on Friday denied labeling Haiti, El Salvador and African nations “shithole countries” during an Oval Office meeting with senators on immigration, despite accounts of three people briefed on the conversation.
“The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used,” Trump said in a Twitter posting on Friday morning, using an acronym for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program protecting some individuals who immigrated to the U.S. as children from deportation.
The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made – a big setback for DACA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018
The White House didn’t immediately respond Friday to a request for comment about whether Trump was specifically denying using the term “shithole countries.”
Trump’s remarks prompted criticisms from around the world, including some of those countries named. The African Union said it was “frankly alarmed” by the comments, according to the Associated Press.
An opposition lawmaker in Ghana called upon developing nations to boycott the U.S. until Trump leaves office. The United Nations human rights office in Geneva called the remarks “shocking, shameful,” Agence France Presse reported in a tweet.
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