Jim Acosta did not beat around the bush with Trump's hateful comments on Haiti and Africa.
On the eve of Martin Luther King Day, the Washington Post revealed that Donald Trump told lawmakers trying to broker protected status for immigrants that Haiti and countries in Africa are "shitholes," and that the United States should seek to bring in people from countries like Norway instead.
The comment forced the political world, once again, to face the reality that the man sitting in the Oval Office is a stone cold racist.
Some reporters, like CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta, are refusing to use flowery language or play down what happened. In conversation with Wolf Blitzer, Acosta didn't hold back when describing Trump's latest racist attack on immigrants.
"The president just seems to have a problem here," Acosta said, noting that Trump's comments about immigrants from majority-black nations can't be separated from his remarks on issues like Charlottesville.
"[W]e can tiptoe around it, we can dance around it and not really put our finger on it, but the president seems to harbor racist feelings about people of color from other parts of the world," he added.
I think, Wolf, what we have to come to grips with and I almost have to think back to the day we were at Trump Tower when the president was commenting on Charlottesville and he was saying that there were very fine people on both sides, saying there were very fine people among the white supremacists and the Nazis is that the president just seems to have a problem here, Wolf, in this area. And we can tiptoe around it, we can dance around it and not really put our finger on it, but the president seems to harbor racist feelings about people of color from other parts of the world. And it's just a terrible thing to have come out of your mouth as a white house correspondent, or as a journalist, but if these comments are accurate, Wolf, I think it just is going to cause more damage, more grave damage to this presidency because it cuts to the very core of who he is.
Acosta is delivering an uncomfortable truth: Trump, at his core, harbors racist beliefs and acts on them. And he has done so at every turn, from his days discriminating against minorities as a landlord in the 70s, to his calls to have the Central Park Five executed, to his claims that President Barack Obama's birth certificate was a forgery he used to get on welfare.
Long before his chances of landing in the White House were ever taken seriously, we as a nation had ample opportunities to appreciate that Trump does not see black and brown people as his equals. The fact that we are still struggling to have this conversation is a travesty which makes Acosta's blunt words all the more necessary.
