Moments after the news broke that President Donald Trump said he didn't want immigrants coming to the united States from "sh*thole countries" like Haiti and African countries, former CIA officer turned political commentator Phil Mudd took to the airwaves to denounce the president.
As the night wore on with far-right commentators working diligently as apologists for the West Wing, Mudd returned to fight back.
"I'm not surprised," Mudd confessed to Lemon. "In one way, I'm proud. I am a proud sh*tholer. My family was called Wops and mackerel-eaters. I'm proud of that. We came when with people from Ireland when they were seen as dirty people. Dirty Catholics who didn't belong in a Protestant country."
He went on to say that it was "sh*tholers that built this country," he explained they were called "slopers and slant eyes. Chinese people who built this country. Sh*tholers from Japanese internment camps as American citizens and that's the legacy we bare shame for."
These immigrants escaped Guatemala and El Salvador, Mudd explained. He said that he worked for a sh*tholer who protected the country after 9/11.
"George Tenent [former Director of Central Intelligence for the United States Central Intelligence Agency] is a first generation Greek," Mudd continued. "I guess he's a sh*tholer."
He named off famous patriotic leaders, famous baseball players and heroes.
"I'm proud to be a sh*tholer and I want a t-shirt, hashtag, I am them. I'm proud, yeah, let's stand against this and say, 'It's not about black people. It's not about white people from Norway, it's about the people who built America, and who we denigrated until we were ashamed and we realized it was inappropriate. And we're learning the lesson again today."
Lemon said that what Mudd was saying brought tears to his eyes because it was not only offensive but he couldn't see how anyone could defend it. "It's about pure racism," he said. "To say otherwise is in deep denial or cunningly deceiving, deceptive."
In response to talk-radio host John Fredericks claiming it wasn't racist but about economics, Mudd called outright BS.
"Let's be clear, a white honky from Norway can come here but black dude from Haiti can't," Mudd said. "What's that tell you in America that in one generation called you a N***er? What does that tell you, Don? I can tell you that what that tells a honky like me: we're no different than we were a generation ago."
Mudd said that he was learning an unfortunate lesson about all of this.
"We're learning the same lessons we learned when we called Chinese man a slant-eye. When we called a man from Guatamala a spic and a wetback and we called a black man a N***er. That's what it tells me. That's what it tells me. And we got a ways to learn but we can step back and say we're proud because I spoke this on CNN, 30 to 1, the e-mails I got saying 'You speak for us. We're from Italy, Ireland, Greece, every single one of them was from a place they would say, 'Hey, hashtag I'm one of them."
Watch the full commentary below:
