As President Donald Trump‘s “shithole” comments sparked an international debate over whether the president is racist, another story about the president’s behavior around people of color seems to reaffirms what many think.
According to NBC, Trump repeatedly pressed a career intelligence analyst about what country she was from. The woman was briefing the president on a hostage situation in Pakistan and told him she was from New York. The president was reportedly unhappy with that answer, wanting to know her country of origin. When he found out she was of Korean descent, he wondered aloud why she wasn’t handling North Korea for him.
From NBC:
“Where are you from?” the president asked, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the exchange.
New York, she replied.
Trump was unsatisfied and asked again, the officials said. Referring to the president’s hometown, she offered that she, too, was from Manhattan. But that’s not what the president was after.
He wanted to know where “your people” are from, according to the officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity due to the nature of the internal discussions.
After the analyst revealed that her parents are Korean, Trump turned to an adviser in the room and seemed to suggest her ethnicity should determine her career path, asking why the “pretty Korean lady” isn’t negotiating with North Korea on his administration’s behalf, the officials said.
That the president thinks someone’s ethnicity should have factored into their job is astounding. That he managed to work some casual sexism into the mix as well is… completely unsurprising.