The aftershocks from Donald Trump’s inflammatory denunciation of dark-skinned nations, referring to Haiti, Africa and El Salvador as “s**thole countries” continues to reverberate around the globe.
Two-time Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn (Mystic River, Milk) penned a scorching op-ed for Time magazine on Friday, a heat-seeking missile of a memo that called Trump “an enemy of mankind” and “an enemy of the state” over his reported assessments of those countries.
On Thursday, the Washington Post first reported that Trump asked, during a meeting with lawmakers, “Why are we having all these people from s***hole countries come here?” referring to Haiti and African nations. Trump later said he used “tough” language but denied using that phrase.
In the essay marking the eight-year anniversary of the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake, Penn talked about his experiences as a volunteer in Haiti.
Sean Penn says Haiti is not a shithole. Read our founder’s piece on @TIME: https://t.co/yCaesux1Ky
— J/P HRO (@jphro) January 13, 2018
“While Haitian immigrants typically arrive in the United States with lower levels of education and income than the general population, they sacrifice as parents to scrap and save and to ensure that their children can make the most of the opportunity to be here,” he wrote. “They contribute. And there is no disputing the value they add to American society.”
Penn said Trump’s reported comments were “far worse than mere insensitivity or even nationalism. Those standards are not disgraceful enough.”
“We will find unity,” Penn concluded, “only when we recognize that in our current president we have elected, perhaps for the first time in our history, an enemy of compassion. Indeed, we can be unified not only with each other but with Africa, El Salvador, Haiti, Mexico, the Middle East and beyond if we recognize President Donald Trump is an enemy of Americans, Republicans, Democrats, Independents and every new child born. An enemy of mankind. He is indeed an enemy of the state.”
