At a meeting in the Oval Office on Thursday, the US leader reportedly asked why so many people from those countries come to America. Paul Altidor, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, told NBC News contributor Yamiche Alcindor that he and the Haitian government “vehemently condemn” Trump’s comments, noting that they were obviously “based on stereotypes.”
“Either the president has been misinformed or he is miseducated,” Altidor said. “Haitians fought along US soldiers in the revolutionary war and we continue to be great contributors to American society,” he added.
According to Alcindor, Ambassador Paul Altidor also said that his country’s embassy in DC has heard from “many US citizens” of Haitian ancestry who are demanding an apology, and has formally summoned a US official to explain Trump’s comments.
The social media community, several Democratic lawmakers among them, came down on Trump like a ton of bricks, denouncing his comments as racist. Illinois state Sen. Kwame Raoul, whose Haitian parents immigrated to the US in the 1950s, said: “I don’t think there’s any apologizing out of this.
“He’s demonstrated himself to be unfit, unknowledgeable about the history of this country and the history of contributions that immigrants, particularly Haitian immigrants, have made to this country,” the Chicago Democrat added. “It makes me embarrassed to have this guy as the president of my country.”