Trump takes swipe at immigration 'from shithole countries'

However, the the White House has denied all of these comments. The pact also includes restrictions on immigrants' abilities to bring relatives to the US and termination of a visa lottery system that has helped gain entry for people from African and other diverse countries.

On his CNN show AC360, Cooper, who reported live from Haiti during the devastating quake of 2010, didn't hold back any punches and described the quotes attributed to Trump as flatly "racist".

Trump built his candidacy and presidency around hard stances on immigration, vowing to build a wall along the Mexican border and cut legal immigration by half, among other positions. Trump reportedly said, suggesting suggested the United States could benefit more from immigration from countries such as Norway.

The New York Times also reported past year that Trump said immigrants in Haiti have AIDS, though the White House denied that account.

The Government of Botswana has today made public a press release condemning Donald Trump's alleged terming of African nations as "shithole countries".

"He will always reject temporary, weak, and risky stopgap measures that threaten the lives of hardworking Americans, and undercut immigrants who seek a better life in the United States through a legal pathway", the statement concluded.

"I honestly can not imagine the pain that those Oval Office comments are causing for immigrants and people of color everywhere", Schatz said, on the social media network.

The Washington Post first reported Mr. Trump's remarks, later adding more detail on the president's comments.

"[The] President's slogan Make America Great Again is really code for Make America White Again", Richmond said.

Mr Trump later tweeted that he would not accept the proposed bi-partisan deal as the U.S. would be "forced to take large numbers of people from high crime countries which are doing badly". Thursday's meeting came one day after Trump met with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg at the White House. I want safety and security for our people.

Confirming the comments with their own sources, Fox News' Jesse Watters said the comments reflected "how the forgotten men and women talk at the bar".

"There has not been a deal reached yet", said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

And Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said in a tweet that the reported remark "ignores the contributions thousands of Haitians have made to our #SoFla community and nation". Chris Van Hollen said he was "disgusted", while Sen.

Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) called it "completely inappropriate for the president to refer to other countries in the manner in which he reportedly did, especially given the circumstances and disasters that led many TPS immigrants to seek refuge and shelter in the U.S".