Sh**hole Countries, Missing Economy

Turning poor nations into a punchline is cheaper than admitting there is no real plan for prices, wages, or the affordability crisis.

Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania. December 9, 2025.

The marketing materials promised an affordability event. Voters arrived expecting talk about grocery bills and gas pumps. Instead, they got a masterclass in racial hierarchy and a congresswoman told the country oughta get her the hell out.

The bait-and-switch would be impressive if it weren’t so predictable. Republican strategists wanted kitchen table economics. Midterm positioning. Inflation messaging. The president had other plans. The cameras started rolling for economic policy. They captured a ritualized hate rally instead.

Trump opened with his greatest hit from 2018. The closed-door meeting where he asked why America accepts people from s**thole countries and suggested Norway send better stock. Back then, when it leaked, there was damage control. Denials flew. Lawmakers who attended called it hate-filled, vile, racist. The African Union condemned it. Haiti responded. The UN labeled it shocking and shameful. DACA negotiations collapsed. Diplomatic relations soured.

Seven years ago, the phrase required spinning. It had to be walked back, minimized, wrapped in plausible deniability about merit-based immigration. There was at least a recognition that a line existed.

This time Trump told the story himself. On purpose. With obvious pleasure. He revisited the contrast between poor nonwhite nations and Nordic states. No denial. No spin. Just the raw taxonomy of acceptable versus disposable humans, sorted by melanin content and passport color.

The crowd understood immediately. They began chanting it back. S**thole. S**thole. S**thole.

Trump grinned. Tossed out his halfhearted disclaimer; I didn’t say s**thole, you did.

Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan. All poor. All war-torn. All racialized as inherently lesser. Trump described them as filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. Somalia became a hellhole where there is nothing and people kill each other all the time.

Nordic countries received different treatment. Polite. Nice people. Ideal immigrants. The implication hung in the air like tear gas; some places produce real Americans, others produce provisional ones. Always suspect. Always deportable.

Enter Ilhan Omar, positioned perfectly as the designated scapegoat.

Trump didn’t critique her politics or policy positions. He questioned her right to exist in America. Called her presence illegal. Sneered at Ilhan Omar, whatever the hell her name is, with the little turban. Repeated the long-debunked conspiracy that she married her brother for immigration fraud. Never mind that fact-checkers dismantled this narrative repeatedly. Never mind that Omar fled Somalia as a child, lived in refugee camps, resettled legally, became a citizen in 2000.

The attack works because the audience accepted the premise five minutes earlier. If certain countries are diseased, migrants from those countries become contamination. Exclusion becomes self-defense. A proposal for a permanent pause on Third World migration stops sounding extreme. It becomes hygiene. Common sense. Survival instinct.

And there it is; the complete logical framework. First, describe places as pathological. Second, define their people as threats. Third, brand removal as prudence. Fourth, make it a singalong.

The invitation promised economic substance. The delivery was two hours of which foreigners deserve to exist. Economic anxiety served as stage dressing for the real product; communal permission to shout racial slurs in unison. To assign national decline to countries most attendees couldn’t locate on a map. To experience the thrill of exclusion disguised as patriotism.

The Nordic fixation sharpens the absurdity. More immigrants from Norway would be great, the logic goes. Except Norway offers universal healthcare, strong unions, generous welfare, high living standards. Its citizens have minimal incentive to abandon that for American healthcare bankruptcy and mass shootings. The Nordic preference isn’t a recruitment strategy.

It’s a racial aesthetic. Invoke prosperous white countries as ideal. Treat poor nonwhite countries as pathology.

The distance between 2018 and 2025 measures total collapse of pretense. Seven years ago, the phrase leaked from a private meeting. It required damage control. Minimization. Semi-denial. There was tacit admission something crossed a boundary.

Now the same phrase is written into the rally script. Turned into call-and-response for thousands. The crowd doesn’t tolerate the slur; they perform it. What once needed plausible deniability now demands open participation. What was whispered behind closed doors is now amplified through sound systems.

A congresswoman who survived war and displacement gets told she doesn’t belong. Not by anonymous trolls. By a president. On stage. With full video documentation.