It was the middle-school level insult heard around the world:  According to a Jan. 12 Washington Post article, last Thursday, President Donald Trump reportedly asked several lawmakers, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” after they suggested protecting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and several African countries. Managing to pour more gasoline on the fire, Trump then suggested that the United States should instead bring in more immigrants from countries like Norway and proceeded to question why certain people were even allowed in the country to begin with.  Trump reportedly asked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson “Why do we need more Haitians?” and claimed that “they all have AIDS.” According to a Dec. 23, 2017 New York Times article, he then claimed that the nearly 40,000 Nigerians issued visas in 2017 would never want to “go back to their huts” in Africa. Although several Republicans in attendance claimed not to remember Trump using any profanity or saying anything demeaning, Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) confirmed that his profane rant went exactly as reported. Anyone can clearly see that the President of the United States did indeed call these non-white countries “shitholes” and all but implied that he fundamentally disagreed with the very idea of American immigration. The implications of this are beyond terrifying. 

From day one, Trump’s only real coherent political position has been hard-line opposition to immigration, drawn on starkly racial lines. “Make America Great Again” was, and will always be, a dog-whistle proclamation that America should return to the days of unspoken white supremacy. In the minds of Trump and his rabid supporters, America was great when discrimination was the law of the land and an unquestioned cultural maxim. Non-white people were expected to be complacent in their role as second-class citizens, and their participation in politics was to be made completely non-existent. Many of Trump’s supporters seem to pine for this era or, at least, the gross caricature created by their hateful nostalgia. However, what Trump’s recent comments suggest is that he holds an even bleaker vision of the ideal America. By claiming that immigrants who are looking for a better life come from “shitholes” and that the only immigrants worth taking in are those from equally developed — and predominantly white — countries, Trump seemingly has given up on the very idea of the American experiment. From its very outset, the United States has prided itself as a shining city on a hill, a country for the world to look up to and for those seeking a better life. Whether it be Jews fleeing anti-Semitism, Germans reeling from political violence, Irish seeking a way out from the Great Famine, or Koreans escaping their divided peninsula, America managed to keep its doors open to new arrivals. In fact, Trump’s own grandfather, Frederick Trump, was an immigrant himself, having moved from his native Bavaria to seek his fortune in the New World, according to an Oct. 26, 2016 article in the Huffington Post. Undoubtedly, he faced the same discrimination as immigrants do now, yet he fought through it all and secured a future for his family in the United States. Even as nativists attempted to keep their fragile notions of American exclusivity alive, the American dream never died. There was always a chance, always a way for those ill at ease in their home countries to look to America. Trump seems to fundamentally disagree with this model in its entirety. 

Trump’s flawed logic suggests that anyone from a “shithole” non-white country can never become an American. Even those who have already integrated in American society are suspect, their nationality and ethnicity an insurmountable barrier to acceptability. Every action Trump takes on immigration is through this central idea that whiteness is the paramount signifier of the American spirit.  While he may futilely claim that he is the “least racist person” — as he recently did, according to a Jan. 14 New York Times article — every single action and suggestion the President has taken on immigration suggests otherwise. While Republicans are often quick to accuse Democrats of attempting to make the United States more like Europe, Trump’s vision of immigration is, in fact, much more in line with the extremely restrictive practices European countries have adopted. Take for example Norway, the country he so desperately would prefer immigrants originate from. In an attempt to keep the country’s ethnostate nature intact, Norway has adopted extremely strict immigration laws specifically to keep the tide of refugees from North Africa and the Middle East out of the country, according to a Dec. 30, 2015 Sputnik News article. 

Despite Trump’s wishes, the United States has never been, nor will it be, a white ethnostate. While the media has obviously focused on the crass and immature nature of Trump’s comments, particularly coming off the unflattering portrait painted of him in Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” Trump’s complete disbelief in non-white immigrants is far more troubling. Trump’s logic dangerously borders on outright white nationalism, a similarity not helped by his insistence that the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville included some “very fine people” among their ranks. Sadly, the presidency is no stranger to racism. After all, the position has included several slaveholders and one outright Confederate in John Tyler among its ranks. If Trump continues down his current path, he casts his lot with them and not with the American ideals he swore to uphold and protect.