JEWISH WORLD

By DENNIS PRAGER H ere are 10 thoughts on the president’s alleged use of the word “s—hole” in describing Haiti, a Central American country and African countries: 1. There are few filters between President Donald Trump’s mind and mouth. That is his appeal and his weakness. It is very common that a person’s strengths are also weaknesses. I wish Trump’s tweets and comments were as forth- right— as un-P.C. as they are now—but stated in a sophisticated way. I also wish that cheesecake was not fattening. But just as cheesecake comes with sugar, Donald Trump comes with unso- phisticated rhetoric. People are packages, not a la carte menus. 2. As a rule, a president of the United States should not label countries, let alone continents, “s—holes.” I don’t know what word the president actually used, but had he used the word “dys- functional” instead of “s—hole,” that actually might have been a service to the people of many of these countries. I have been to 20 African countries. Corruption is Africa’s greatest single problem. That’s why those who truly care about Africans, many of whom are terrific people, need to honestly describe the moral state of many or most African countries. What ben- efit is it to honest, hardworking Africans or Latin Americans or oth- ers to deny the endemic corruption of these societies? As Guatemalan columnist Claudia Nunez wrote on Trump in the Guatemalan newspaper Siglio 21 : “The epithets he uses to describe certain groups are unfor- tunate and exemplify the deca- dence of the current political scene. But he has also said things that are true, for example, that it is we citizens of migration countries who have accommodated our- selves to the need to export people, as we have calmly allowed exces- sive levels of corruption to grow for decades.” 3. Though many wonderful immigrants come from the world’s worst places, there is some connec- tion between the moral state of an immigrant’s country and the immi- grant’s contribution to America. According to data from the Center for Immigration Studies, 73 per- cent of households headed by Central American and Mexican immigrants use one or more wel- fare programs, as do 51 percent of Caribbean immigrants and 48 per- cent of African immigrants. Contrast that with 32 percent of East Asians and 26 percent of Europeans. 4. The press’s constant descrip- tion of Trump as a racist, a white supremacist, a fascist and an anti- Semite has been a “Big Lie.” It is meant to hurt the president, but it mostly damages the country and the media. To cite the most often provided “evidence” for the presi- dent’s racism, the president never said or implied that the neo-Nazis at the infamous Charlottesville, Virginia, demonstrations were “fine people.” The “fine people” he referred to were the pro- and anti- statue removal demonstrators. 5. Why are the left’s repeated descriptions of America as “sys- temically racist” not the moral equivalent of the word “s—hole”? The left’s descriptions of America and its white majority are at least as offensive, less true, and not made in private or semi-private conversations but in the open (in most college classes, for example). 6. The poor choice of language notwithstanding, can any countries be legitimately described as “s— holes?” As Ben Shapiro, a never- Trumper, wrote, “The argument that Trump is wrong to call some countries s—holes comes down to nicety, not truth—which is why Rich Lowry of National Review took Joan Walsh of CNN to the woodshed over whether she’d rather live in Haiti or Norway.” Walsh refused to respond, giving the specious response that she has- n’t been to either country. 7. That the president allows him- self to speak openly to Democrats—whose overriding ambition is to undo his election— is testament to his self-confi- dence, if not his hubris. And his naiveté. 8. What people say in private is neither my business nor my con- cern. That’s why I wrote a col- umn in The Wall Street Journal in the 1990s defending Hillary Clinton against charges of anti- Semitism for allegedly directing expletive-filled anti-Jewish com- ments in private against a Jewish campaign official she felt was responsible for Bill Clinton’s lost congressional race. Former President Harry Truman’s private 12 JEWISH WORLD • JANUARY 26 - FEBRUARY 1, 2018 Ten Thoughts on Trump’s Language Trump is not politically correct but he is not a racist either As a rule, a president of the United States should not label countries, let alone continents, “s—holes.” President Donald Trump, who allegedly used a vulgarism to describe certain countries. continued on page 26 FIRST PERSON