US President Donald Trump defends vulgar immigrant comments, partly denies them

Trump said Friday he was only expressing what many people think but won’t say about immigrants from economically depressed countries. That’s according to a person who spoke to the president as criticism of his comments ricocheted around the globe.

President Donald Trump has offered a partial denial in public but privately defended his extraordinary remarks disparaging Haitians and African countries a day earlier.

Trump said Friday he was only expressing what many people think but won’t say about immigrants from economically depressed countries. That’s according to a person who spoke to the president as criticism of his comments ricocheted around the globe.

The president spent Thursday evening making a flurry of calls to friends and outside advisers to judge their reaction to the tempest. The confidant says Trump wasn’t apologetic about his inflammatory remarks and denied he was racist, instead blaming the media for distorting his meaning.