The White House is denying a New York Times report that U.S. President Donald Trump used highly derogatory language to refer to visa recipients from Haiti and Nigeria.
According to the Dec. 23 report, during a June meeting in the Oval Office on immigration, a “plainly enraged” Trump said recent Haitian arrivals “all have AIDS” and Nigerians would never “go back to their huts” in Africa after seeing the United States. The New York Times claims that it heard about the egregious remarks from two U.S. officials -- one who attended the meeting and a second who was briefed on it by another attendee. Both requested anonymity to discuss the meeting, the New York Times said.
On Saturday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders vehemently denied that Trump had uttered the two offensive statements.
“General Kelly, General McMaster, Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Nielsen and all other senior staff actually in the meeting deny these outrageous claims,” she told the newspaper, referring to four top-level White House officials who were present in the Oval Office that day. “It’s both sad and telling The New York Times would print the lies of their anonymous ‘sources’ anyway.”
