President Donald Trump was not talking about race when he made the alleged controversial vulgar comments on immigration on Thursday, but was referring instead to corruption, mass starvation and human rights abuses in other countries, said former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
"It had nothing to do with race. It has to do with their countries. Countries that are corrupt. Countries where they have mass starvation. Countries where they don't have human and women's rights and freedom – the same freedoms that we have, the economic freedoms, religious freedoms, freedoms of the press. They're slaughtering Christians in the tens of thousands," Kerik told Newsmax TV's "Newsmax Now" on Friday.
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Lawmakers and critics slammed Trump over comments they said he made when talking about Haiti, El Salvador and "sh**hole" countries in Africa that were the subject of bipartisan immigration talks in the Oval Office on Thursday. Kerik explained the countries in question had "major problems."
"We're bringing in their people and the president has concerns. He wants the best. He wants the brightest. He wants people with money coming into this country that's going to benefit the country, not otherwise," he said.
Kerik also didn't mince words about the response from lawmakers present when Trump made the supposed comments, who he said left the room "whining like five-year-old children running to their mother" because "this guy said a bad word."
"It's appalling. It's disgusting. And it wreaks of this negative political atmosphere where the Democrats and Republicans historically just couldn't get anything done, and this is why Donald Trump has been elected to the White House," he said.
"I heard [Sen.] Dick Durbin whining and screaming — at least one walked out of that room and ran to the press to complain about the words the president used.
"They're supposed to be doing a job for the American people and they'd rather get in there and stir this argument and stir this dissention amongst each other," he explained.
Kerik also maintained Democrats were interested in welcoming immigrants from those countries because "they get more votes on the left when they bring in that demographic." He also said those who opposed Trump on the issue did so "because they don't want to get into the real argument."
"They don't want to talk about what's happened in immigration over the last five, 10, 15, 20 years. They don't want to go down that road because it's a losing battle for them. So, right now, what do they do? They jump on the wording that the president used.
"They're not fixing the problem and the president's annoyed with it, and I think that's what the real issue is," Kerik said.