After Donald Trump called Somali immigrants “garbage,” former CNN anchor Don Lemon had strong words of his own for the U.S. president.
“I think what he said about Somalia, I think that that is disqualifying to be a president of the United States,” Lemon said on his Substack show on Friday. “Donald Trump and his family, they’re immigrants as well. They were immigrants as well. Most of us are immigrants to this country, except for African-Americans who are the only people who did not come here voluntarily.”
He went on: “So, you know, I think that calling a sitting member of Congress ‘garbage’ and calling Somalia ‘garbage,’ it goes back to the whole thing about ’s***hole’ countries. It’s racist. It’s vulgar. It’s beneath the dignity of the White House. It is sexist. And quite frankly, it’s just gross. And Donald Trump seems like a gross, bigoted, racist piece of s***. I can say that now because that’s how I feel. And look, if someone called someone I knew garbage or me garbage, then, you know, hey, I’m giving him the same energy. … If he can speak that way, if he can say s***hole countries, I can say the same word. Why can’t I do it? And why can’t the journalists do it?”
Trump made his offensive comments about Somali immigrants during a rant during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “They contribute nothing,” he said, per The Guardian. “I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you.”
He also called U.S. Representative llhan Omar, a Somali-born U.S. citizen, “garbage,” and said, “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country … These are people who do nothing but complain. They complain, and from where they came from, they got nothing … When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but b****, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.”
In a New York Times essay published two days later, Omar reacted to Trump’s rant, saying that the president “reaches for the same playbook of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and division” time and time again.
“Trump denigrates not only Somalis but so many other immigrants, too, particularly those who are Black and Muslim,” the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota added. “While he has consistently tried to vilify newcomers, we will not let him silence us. He fails to realize how deeply Somali Americans love this country. … The president knows he is failing, and so he is reverting to what he knows best: trying to divert attention by stoking bigotry.”