One could almost hear the world’s sigh of relief! She should know, right? After all Ivana is the mother of Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric, those three exemplary pillars of society. It feels good to know that, according to the former Mrs. Trump, the father of her children called a whole continent and two American nations –coincidentally inhabited mostly by people of color--“shithole countries” not because he is a despicable bigot, but because “Sometimes he says things that are silly." Well, of course, a silly president is always preferable to a disgusting, hateful, racist one.

Yet, not everyone agrees with Ivana’s assessment. Take, for instance, Richard Spencer, a white supremacist who was one of the organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., last year.  “It’s obviously all about race, and to their credit, liberals point out the obvious,” he told The New York Times refuting conservatives who attempted to give “alternative facts” and make believe Trump’s coarse remarks were not racially motivated. 

But Spencer wasn’t the only Neo-Nazi enthusiastically celebrating Trump’s ignorant remarks. “This is encouraging and refreshing, as it indicates Trump is more or less on the same page as us with regards to race and immigration,” said the Daily Stormer, the largest Neo-Nazi website online, with almost orgasmic pleasure.

Yes, Ivana, your former husband is silly, but what is worse, he is “on the same page” with Neo-Nazis, which makes him also a hateful bigot. No wonder he has surrounded himself with dinosaurs and troglodytes like attorney general Jeff Sessions, speech writer Stephen Miller, chief of staff John Kelly and many others. 

Trump, who during his campaign told Miami Haitians “Whether you vote for me or not, I really want to be your biggest champion,” knows nothing –and most probably, doesn’t care --about Haiti, its history or its people. Now, one year into his disastrous tenure at the White House, Trump changed his tune and decided Haiti is a “shithole country” and their Temporary Protection Status (TPS), that has allowed 60,000 Haitians to live and work legally in the U.S. since a 2010 earthquake killed 300,000 people and reduced to rubble their homeland should be terminated.

“We are also the country that the United States has invaded several times, preventing us from consistently ruling ourselves. If we are a poor country, then our poverty comes in part from pillage and plunder,” wrote Haitian-American novelist Edwidge Danticat in The Miami Herald. Capturing the Haitian spirit, she also wrote: “Mr. President, so many have tried to take us out before. Eight years ago, the Earth itself tried to take Haiti out. Yet the courage and obstinate resistance of Haitians remain...”

El Salvador’s Worst Shitholes Are ‘Made in America’ is a thoroughly researched heartfelt piece by Salvadoran writer Robert Alvarenga Lovato. Trump also deprived 200,000 of the writer’s compatriots of their TPS and ordered them to leave the U.S. by September 2019. 

“My journalist’s hiking boots still have leftover feces and dirt from the ultimate shitholes of El Salvador: its mass graves,” Lovato writes. “Many of the thousands of graves that my sources there have mapped were dug by U.S.-trained and funded security forces in the 80s. Most of the rest were dug more recently by L.A. based-gangs steadily deported to El Salvador by U.S. immigration authorities since the 90s.”

More than his appalling lack of basic decency, Trump’s foul mouth proves –if anybody still had any doubts—that he is a racist “on the same page” with Neo-Nazis and white supremacists. And that his despicable actions must be denounced and resisted by all – I repeat, all -- decent human beings.

As Martin Luther King Jr said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”