Trump intensifies his anti-immigrant rhetoric and embraces the phrase “shithole countries”

President Donald Trump ramped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric in a speech Tuesday night, repeatedly attacking Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and complaining about immigration out of Europe.

“Let’s take some from Denmark. Would you mind sending us some people? Send us nice people. Do you mind? But we always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Dirty, filthy, disgusting, crime-ridden. The only thing they do well is chase boats,” Trump said while addressing supporters in Pennsylvania.

The speech was billed as an event to sell his economic agenda, but it quickly devolved into a campaign speech filled with derogatory insults.

Trump specifically targeted Omar, a Somali American representing Minnesota. He appeared to purposely mispronounce her name and referred to Omar’s hijab as a turban.

“I love her, she comes over, she doesn’t do anything but s—-. She always complains. She comes from a country that, I mean, is considered the worst country in the world, right?” Trump said.

“She should get out. Kick her out immediately,” Trump added.

Her supporters then unleashed “send her back” chants about the congresswoman, who is a U.S. citizen.

Omar responded to the comments, the latest in Trump’s attacks on her and Somali immigrants, in a post on X on Tuesday night.

“Trump’s obsession with me is beyond strange. He needs serious help. Since he has no economic policies to promote, he is resorting to regurgitating bigoted lies. He remains a national embarrassment,” he wrote.

Trump admits saying “shithole countries”

Trump also recalled Tuesday a 2018 meeting in which he told a group of senators behind closed doors that the United States should not accept immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti.

When reported at the time, Trump himself flatly denied using the slur.

“I never said anything derogatory about Haitians. other than Haiti “It is obviously a very poor and troubled country,” Trump wrote on X, then known as Twitter.

ABC News reported that at the 2018 Oval Office meeting with senators, Trump expressed frustration over the visa lottery program and asked those present why they would want people from Haiti, Africa and other “shithole countries” to come to the United States.”

In his denial then, Trump accused Democrats present at the meeting of making up comments attributed to him and said he “should probably record future meetings.” In particular, the president at that time He did not deny that he suggested that the United States should admit more immigrants from places like Norway, comments that were confirmed by multiple sources with direct knowledge of the conversations.

But in his speech Tuesday, Trump embraced the insult as he boasted about suspending immigration applications from what he called “third world countries,” including “hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries.”

Someone in the audience shouted the word “shit.”

“I didn’t say ‘shithole,’ you did,” Trump joked. “Remember, I told that to the senators. They came, the Democrats, they wanted to be bipartisan, so they came and said, ‘This is totally off the record, nothing is mentioned here, we want to be honest,’ because our country was going to hell.”

“And we had a meeting and I said, ‘Why do we only accept people from shitty countries,’ right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden? Just a few? Let’s bring some people from Denmark. Would you mind sending us some people? Send us nice people. Do you mind? But we always accept people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Dirty, filthy, disgusting, crime-ridden.”

ABC News’ Justin Gomez and Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.