US Republican Senator Rand Paul says US President Donald Trump should not be considered a racist just because he referred to some countries as “s**thole.”
The Kentucky lawmaker, who had run against the New York billionaire in the 2016 primaries, made the comments on NBC Saturday amid outrage over the president’s racist slur.
Paul, who is also an ophthalmologist, asserted that he knows “for a fact” that Trump is not racist because he paid for the senator’s visit to Haiti on an aid mission.
"I don't think the comments were constructive at all… But I also think that to be fair, we shouldn't draw conclusions that he didn't intend," he claimed. "I think it's unfair then to sort of all of a sudden paint him, 'Oh, well, he's a racist,' when I know, for a fact, that he cares very deeply about the people in Haiti because he helped finance a trip where we were able to get vision back for 200 people in Haiti.”
The senator urged people to imagine “different words in there,” suggesting that the president’s statement would then sound less moot.
"Let's take the whole scenario and put different words in there and let's say, 'We'd rather have people from economically prosperous countries than economically deprived countries.' Or, 'We realize that there are more problems in economically deprived countries, therefore there's a bigger impetus for them to want to come,'" Paul said. "Then it wouldn't have been so controversial."
Paul further suggested that calling Trump a racist is counterproductive and would not be in the interest of immigrants.
"You can't have an immigration compromise if everybody's out there calling the president a racist,” he said. "They're actually destroying the setting. And he's a little bit of it, but both sides now are destroying the setting in which anything meaningful can happen on immigration."
The US commander in chief allegedly made the racially charged comments in reference to African countries, Haiti and El Salvador during a meeting with lawmakers last week.
He was wondering why the US does not allow more people from countries like Norway instead.