US President, Donald Trump has repudiated his purported disparaging outbursts reviling Nigerian immigrants for residing in huts back home.
The New York Times reports that during a meeting held in the Oval Office in June, Trump said immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS”, Afghanistan was described as ”a haven of terrorists” and Nigerians living in the US were mocked for residing in huts back home.
“Forty thousand (migrants) had come from Nigeria. Once they had seen the United States, they would never ‘go back to their huts’ in Africa,” the New York Times (NYT) quoted Trump to have stated this during the meeting.
Trump was reportedly fuming at the number of immigrants in the US, in spite of his travel bans.
The US president proposed an anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim agenda during his campaign to become America’s number one citizen.
“More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained,” officials in the meeting reportedly told NYT. Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They all have AIDS,” he is quoted.
However, the White House has denied that the president made those remarks.
Sarah Sanders, White House press secretary, agreed that the said meeting did take place, adding that the NYT was lying about what transpired at that meeting.
Sanders said John Kelly who is the chief of staff, H.R. McMaster who is the national security adviser, and Rex Tillerson who is the US secretary of state, were all in the meeting and have attested that the NYT lied.“General Kelly, General McMaster, Secretary Tillerson, and all other senior staff actually in the meeting deny these outrageous claims,” Sanders said of the story.
“And it’s both sad and telling that the New York Times would print the lies of their anonymous ‘sources’ anyway.”
