Late to his own meeting and waving a sheet of numbers, President Trump stormed into the Oval Office one day in June, plainly enraged.
Five months before, Mr. Trump had dispatched federal officers to the nation’s airports to stop travelers from several Muslim countries from entering the United States in a dramatic demonstration of how he would deliver on his campaign promise to fortify the nation’s borders.
But so many foreigners had flooded into the country since January, he vented to his national security team, that it was making a mockery of his pledge. Friends were calling to say he looked like a fool, Mr. Trump said.
According to six officials who attended or were briefed about the meeting, Mr. Trump then began reading aloud from the document, which his domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, had given him just before the meeting. The document listed how many immigrants had received visas to enter the United States in 2017.
More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained.
Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.
Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.
As the meeting continued, John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security, and Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state, tried to interject, explaining that many were short-term travelers making one-time visits. But as the president continued, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Miller turned their ire on Mr. Tillerson, blaming him for the influx of foreigners and prompting the secretary of state to throw up his arms in frustration. If he was so bad at his job, maybe he should stop issuing visas altogether, Mr. Tillerson fired back.
Tempers flared and Mr. Kelly asked that the room be cleared of staff members. But even after the door to the Oval Office was closed, aides could still hear the president berating his most senior advisers.
Trump has been a racist all his life. His hatred of black and brown people is well-documented since his days as a NYC landlord. And 62 million people had no problem voting for him, these are your neighbors, friends, and co-workers, people who attend your chosen house of worship, at your grocery store, at the park watching your kids and grandkids play.
They were cool with this asshole. They were so cool with his racism after Obama that they put him in the goddamn White House to make a point to us black folk, to remind us of our place lest we dream that we're human beings in America and not chattel.
But it's not the problem of black people to solve, even though we did in Alabama and Roy Moore. I'm tired of 95-98% of us voting for the person who is not a racist piece of garbage only for white America to scratch their heads and deem it a tough choice somehow.
And yet for white America it is a tough choice. They're not voting against their self-interest when they vote for Republicans who will trash the safety net, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP benefits, homeowner deductions, they've been convinced that the Democrats will do that to them anyway.
No, they're not angry, because they are voting for the racism.
It's a feature of American democracy guys, not a bug.
I'm not cool with any of them.