• Assuming, for the benefit of discussion, that Trump did say what has been reported, was it fair to leak what he said to the news media? No. The leaks were unethical. Closed meetings are meant to encourage free and uninhibited discussion by all participants. Such leaks impede the legislative process and the governing process, undermine trust, and harm all participants.
• Was it irresponsible nonetheless for the President to say anything this inflammatory, knowing that he cannot trust the people in the room, many of which he knows are, if fact, committed foes? Yes. Irresponsible and incompetent.
• Is it “racist” to call such countries “shitholes”? No, of course not. But that’s how the Left rolls.
• Is it inherently racist to insist that the U.S. should seek immigrants from “first world” nations that have cultures compatible with the United States? Again, of course not, but open borders activists refuse to acknowledge that.
• Is there any justification for reacting with horror when the President expresses himself in exactly the same, meat-axe, uncivil, crude and obnoxious way about essentially the same issue, immigration policy, that he did in his speech announcing his candidacy in 2015?

In 2018 I ruled no, citing the Julie Principle. I hereby modify that verdict. Horrified? No, because by now everyone should expect it. As I wrote then, this is how the man speaks, unfortunately, and 8 years later it still has a destructive effect on the nation’s culture [cue the “Nation of Assholes” post].

However, making a similar statement today comes in the teeth of far more dangerous and unhinged Trump Derangement. It is more unethical because the statement is more damaging to the Trump agenda and the prospects of the nation in trying to keep totalitarianism at bay in the mid-terms.

This time the language is worse for other reasons too:

1. The first time Trump used the ugly rhetoric in private. This was a public forum. No leaks needed.

2. He proved he was lying in 2018 when he and others insisted that he never used the denigrating words. Now he says he did. We’re supposed to “remember” what he said he didn’t say.

3. Technical point, but still annoying: The words he allegedly said in 2018 were “shithole countries,” not “shithouse.” How can we remember words that aren’t the same words we were told he said in 2018? Or is he saying he really said “shithouse” and was misquoted?

4. In 2018, Trump specifically said that Norway was an example of the kind of non-shithole country the US should seek legal immigrants from. Later in the past weekend, at a political rally in Port Huron, Michigan, he declared that Norwegian immigrants were no longer welcome. “Norway has become a shithouse country, actually,” Trump said. “Because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize … So I don’t want anybody from Norway.”

Oh! That must have been a joke! Well, it was a stupid, irresponsible joke. It immediately drew a diplomatic protest from Norway. Norway doesn’t even decide who gets Nobel Prizes; it’s like insulting the United States based on who wins the Academy Award for Best Actor. Trump is exaggerating his narcissism in public right before an election takes place when everyone is really getting tired of his quirks and flaws. Of course the Axis media used the “joke” to attack Trump and by extension, all the candidates who support him or who belong to his party. The Reuters story, Norway joins the list of countries Trump has abused in… is typical; there are many more.

Here’s another verdict: if there is really a “blue wave” despite the recent outrageous and terrifying statements from Democratic leaders and candidates, as well as all of the dead canary episodes like the Lindsay Clancy affair, the Cornell rape ethics train wreck, the law enforcement obstruction by Democratic city and state governments, the cynical candidacies of Democrat Senate hopefuls in Maine, Michigan and Texas, the party’s full-on embrace of anti-Semitism, the deliberate efforts by Democrats in Virginia to rig the elections in violation of the state Constitution (Democrats cheat, you know), the continuing exposure of organized, unconstitutional and illegal discrimination against whites and men in ideologically captured institutions, and the discovery that a crucial Democratic Party ally, the Southern Poverty Law Center, was secretly funding the “hate groups” it sought funding to oppose—-and so, so much more that would guarantee a “red wave” with any rational electorate—Donald Trump will be responsible.

Along with all the voters too ignorant, gullible, lazy or apathetic to figure out “what’s going on here,” of course.