US President Donald Trump has sparked outrage by
reportedly using crude language to describe foreign
countries in an Oval Office meeting.
Mr Trump insists he did not insult Haitians and
appeared to deny calling any nations "shitholes", as
was reported, prompting a global outcry.
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin said Mr Trump
called African countries "shitholes" and used
"racist" language.
But two Republicans present said they could not
remember those comments.
Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, of
Arkansas and Georgia, said they heard the
president "call out" what they described as "the
imbalance in our current immigration system".
Amid widespread coverage of his remarks at the
private meeting with lawmakers to discuss
immigration legislation on Thursday, Mr Trump on
Friday tweeted that his language at the meeting had
been "tough". But he added that the words
attributed to him were "not the language used".
Many US media outlets reported the comments on
Thursday, quoting witnesses or people briefed on
the meeting. The White House did not deny them.
"I cannot believe that in the history of the White
House, in that Oval Office, any president has ever
spoken the words that I personally heard our
president speak yesterday," Mr Durbin told
reporters on Friday.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, a top Republican, said
the reported comments were "unfortunate" and
"unhelpful.
Hillary Clinton, who lost to Mr Trump in the 2016
presidential election, said the country had been
subjected to his "ignorant, racist views of anyone
who doesn't look like him".
Mr Trump ignored press questions about the issue
as he signed a proclamation declaring a holiday in
honour of civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr - as
presidents do every year.
He said Americans were celebrating that "self-
evident truth" that "no matter what the colour of our
skin or the place of our birth, we are all created
equal by God".
What was the context for the comments?
Mr Trump's reported remarks came as lawmakers
visited him on Thursday to discuss a bipartisan
proposal that would impose new restrictions on
immigration but protect the so-called "Dreamers" -
hundreds of thousands immigrants brought to the
US illegally as children - from deportation.
Mr Trump was said to have told them that instead
of granting temporary residency to citizens of
countries hit by natural disasters, war or epidemics,
the US should instead be taking in migrants from
countries like Norway.
"Why are we having all these people from shithole
countries come here?" the Washington Post quoted
him as saying, in remarks first reported to be about
Haiti, El Salvador and African nations.
How countries have reacted
What has Trump said about your country?
Democrats decry 'cruel' immigration order
Mr Durbin said that when Mr Trump was told that
the largest groups of immigrants with Temporary
Protected Status (TPS) were from El Salvador,
Honduras and Haiti, the president responded:
"Haitians? Do we need more Haitians?"
But in another tweet on Friday the president denied
that he insulted Haitians.
What was the global reaction?
Botswana summoned the US ambassador to
"express its displeasure" at what it called
"highly irresponsible, reprehensible and racist"
comments
It asked the ambassador "to clarify if Botswana
is regarded as a 'shithole' country given that
there are Botswana nationals residing in the
US"
The African Union said it was "frankly alarmed"
by Mr Trump's statement
UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville
said the comments, if confirmed, were
"shocking and shameful", adding: "I'm sorry
but there is no other word for this but racist."
Haiti's US Ambassador Paul Altidor told the
BBC the idea that "we're simply immigrants
who come here to take advantage of the US" is
wrong.
And in the US?
The National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People ( NAACP) accused the
president of falling "deeper and deeper into the
rabbit hole of racism and xenophobia"
Mia Love, a Utah Republican and the only
Haitian-American in Congress, demanded an
apology from Mr Trump for the "unkind,
divisive, elitist" comments
Black Democrat lawmaker Cedric Richmond
said the comments were "further proof that his
Make America Great Again agenda is really a
Make America White Again agenda"
But Steve King, a right-wing Republican
Congressman from Iowa, backed the president
in a tweet:
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How was the slur reported?
The Washington Post broke the story with the word
"shithole" in its headline and in the alert that the
paper sent out to followers' smartphones.
On US TV, some broadcasters gave content
warnings or avoided saying the word altogether.
Fox News used asterisks to obscure the offensive
word along the bottom of the screen, but CNN and
MSNBC carried it in full.
Around the world, journalists reporting in other
languages faced the question of how to translate
what Mr Trump had said.
In French, headlines featured "pays de merde",
using the expletive to refer to the countries but
without the word "hole"
In Spanish, "paÃses de mierda" was used,
similar to the French, as well as "paÃses de
porquerÃa", which means "trash countries"
In German, "Drecksloch" , which literally
means dirt hole but like the word used by Mr
Trump is considered vulgar
In Dutch, one newspaper used
"achterlijk" (backward) as its headline
In Japanese, a word that translates as "outdoor
toilet" was used
In Portuguese, one outlet used a word that
translates as 'pigsty', while others translated
the quote literally
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