On Trumps “shithole” comment, one aspect of this is he didnt say it “officially”, it was said during a closed meeting with members of congress. He probably thought everything would be “off the record” so to speak. Well it wasnt and people blabbed what was said.
That got me thinking, do we know or even want to know what is said by our leaders behind closed doors? Occasionally microphones have picked up the odd vulgarity or phrase. I remember how surprised people were when the Nixon Oval Office tapes were made public and how many curse words we heard. I also know persons who knew Harry Truman and they said he could cuss up a storm.
The privacy of such conversations should be at the level of what the participants consent to carrying out, no more or no less, in terms of generally contemporaneous discussions.
For the historical record, I think the public and researchers should have access to policymaking discussions of the President and his advisers, maybe 20 or 30 years after the fact.
I was always told, if you say it out loud don’t expect privacy. Some one will hear, some one will repeat it. It is just human nature.
Think what you will, just don’t broadcast it.
No, I don’t think we need to know *everything *an elected official says behind closed doors…but I think it depends on the doors. What Barack says to Michelle in private? Nah. What he says in a policy meeting? Not necessarily, but it’s certainly not off-limits. “Off the record” is only a useful term when it comes to reportage; it’s not like the President can swear a bunch of Congresscritters to secrecy when discussing non-classified subjects.
Also, vulgarity is hardly the problem. I, not surprisingly, don’t give a Trenzalorian fuck about vulgarity qua vulgarity. No one really cared that Nixon or LBJ said “fuck” a lot. Just like no one really cares that this recent nonsense includes the word “shit.” It’s all about intent and context.
You’d expect an intelligent, educated person who was POTUS could refrain from vulgar comments about a particular race or creed of people. It is just so childish what comes out of that man’s mouth.
The issue here isn’t that the President said the word shit. I’m sure most people understand the adults occasionally use words like that in private conversations.
The issue here is that the President identified some particular foreign countries as shitholes. That’s a major screw up for somebody whose job is supposed to include diplomacy. That makes this more evidence that Trump can’t handle the job of being President.
And the fact that he singled out countries that have predominantly black populations as shitholes and then reinforced that remark by contrasting Norway, which does not have a significant black population, as a good country is strong evidence that Trump holds racist beliefs. As somebody who is supposed to be representing all Americans, including the forty million Americans who are black, the President should not hold racist beliefs.
Yeah, the problem isn’t that he swore “off the record”. The problem was that he was a flaming racist piece of shit “off the record”. Which means he’s a flaming racist piece of shit all the time, because that shit doesn’t turn off.
I’ll third what Little Nemo said, with the added thing that Trump didn’t just call any old countries “shitholes,” he used that term for our allies. We’re engaged in bilateral trade with both, a member of a UN subgroup called “Friends of Haiti,” and have worked with El Salvador to fight terrorism and drug trafficking.
If he’d called Syria or Iran or North Korea “shitholes,” that’d be slightly different. But when the leader of our country uses this term–or really any other broad insult–for an allied nation, it’s really stupid.
It makes me really sad that there are a fairly large number of people in this country that think that is is acceptable behavior for the leader of the free world.
Especially after the laughable criticisms they leveled at Obama. Yeah, wearing a brown suit once was such a scandal, right?
I’m not surprised that he characterized countries with primarily generously pigmented persons as said shit-holes.
I’m ashamed that my president* doesn’t understand that people do not want to move to a country with some of the worst education and healthcare systems and outcomes in the developed world.
*No, I’m not playing that stupid #NotMyPresident game. He was elected president of my country, and I have to acknowledge some responsibility for that.
Seven Stages of Denial
(1) He never said SHole.
(2) Maybe he said SHouse. It’s not the same.
(3) He might have said SHole but it was taken out of context. (Maybe he needed a toilet break and was using Brooklynese slang.)
(4) He was speaking of the SHole countries, not the people from those countries.
(5) The people from SHole countries are first to admit their countries are SHoles: that’s why they want to immigrate.
(6) It was locker-room talk, colorful boy talk.
(7) It’s all the Democrats’ fault for repeating private leaders’ talk.
So I guess we’re finally done with this problem and can move on.
I think it’s important for the public to know what kind of people are doing the deliberating on their behalf, in case they’d like to make a change in the next election.
Transparancy is something everyone always promises, but its easy to forget about that concept when its your people making the decisions.
That is also one of those things that people flip-flop on depending on who is in power.
The people claiming these things are private most likely railed at the mere idea of backroom meetings under Obama and demanded transparency.
I agree with Airbeck in that We The People have the right to know what positions our government leaders are arguing and supporting in policy meetings. We have a need to know if Joe Bob Hitler is pushing the President to establish work camps and gas criminals, just as we have the right to know if Milly Moneybags is arguing in favor of a position that greatly enriches her family.
He said Norway and Asia. I’m sure that last bit is being dropped off solely to save on ink and pixels and definitely not because of any sort of agenda.
I’ll defend the president a tiny bit here (believe me, I am no fan of Trump…far, far from it).
I have referred to many places as shitholes over the years including numerous places right here in the US as well as some countries. Frankly, some African countries are shitholes (as are many non-African countries). That is not to say there aren’t nice spots to be found or the people are bad. Just that for any of a variety of reasons their country is a mess (literally and figuratively). It also doesn’t presume to assign blame to anyone. Maybe it is their own fault, maybe it is some outside force or most likely some combination of the two.
That said I am not the president of the United States and its chief diplomat. Most people learn to censor their own speech depending on the circumstances. For instance most people will banter differently around their friends than they would their parents or people at a company event. This is even more important for the president to do since his words will be carried far and wide.
Trump seems to lack this basic function and blurts out whatever is on his mind. It is something his fans seem to prize. His “straight talk” and no worries about politically correct bullshit.
Except he is the president of the United States. With that comes a certain level of decorum. If nothing else it is in his interest to not piss off other countries with talk like this since he may have to negotiate with them someday.
Should he have expected his conversation in this case to remain private? Certainly not. I think he should only expect that in cases where he could legitimately assert executive privilege (Trump takes an expansive but legally unsupported view of what constitutes executive privileged conversations). In all other cases a wise president will assume there is always a hot mic within earshot recording everything he says.
I agree that Trump should tone it down a lot. No dispute on that.
But ISTM that the Democrats are also at fault. Because Trump did not tweet this out to the world, he said it in a gathering of politicians. And if you genuinely believe that this harms US interests, as you suggest, then even political opponents should not go about broadcasting it to the world. The fact that they did so implies that they care more about scoring political points than they do about harming the country.
Again, this is not to absolve Trump. But I don’t see much difference - in the specific context of harming the US - between him and the Democrats who broadcast this remark. (If you don’t think the remark hurts the US and are just concerned about racism, then that’s something else. But your post is focused on the harm to the US aspect, and here I think the Democrats are probably more to blame, if anything.)