President Trump provoked a broad backlash this week when he posted a transcript from a right-wing podcast in which the host referred to China and India as \u201chellhole\u201d places and said recent immigrants from those countries had not \u201cintegrated\u201d into America as \u201cEuropean Americans\u201d had.<\/p>\n
The transcript, which Mr. Trump posted<\/a> on his Truth Social account on Wednesday night, came from a recent episode of \u201cThe Savage Nation,\u201d hosted by Michael Savage, a popular conservative talk radio host<\/a>. Mr. Trump also posted the original video clip of Mr. Savage\u2019s podcast.<\/p>\n The president did not add any commentary to his posts, but across Asia and the United States, many people saw an unwelcome message that demanded a response.<\/p>\n In a rare public rebuke of the White House, the Indian government took to X<\/a> to criticize the comments, calling them \u201cobviously uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste\u201d without explicitly naming Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n Asian American advocacy groups and some Democratic lawmakers faulted Mr. Trump for amplifying xenophobic rhetoric at a time when the administration\u2019s efforts to restrict even legal immigration have left many Indian Americans and Chinese Americans worried about their place in American society.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are deeply disturbed by @POTUS sharing this hateful, racist screed targeting Indian and Chinese Americans,\u201d said the Hindu American Foundation, a group that has been critical of both Democrats and Republicans, in a statement<\/a> on X. \u201cEndorsing such rants as the president of the United States will further stoke hatred and endanger our communities, at a time when xenophobia and racism are already at an all time high.\u201d<\/p>\n The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Trump and China\u2019s leader, Xi Jinping, are scheduled to meet for a summit in Beijing in mid-May.<\/p>\n The podcast excerpt shared by Mr. Trump was recorded shortly after the Supreme Court hearing<\/a> on Mr. Trump\u2019s executive order<\/a> seeking to ban birthright citizenship, which confers citizenship on nearly all children born on U.S. soil and has long been seen as a fundamental tenet of American identity and law.<\/p>\n In the clip, Mr. Savage claimed, without evidence, that recent immigrants had \u201calmost no loyalty\u201d to America; that the nation was being \u201coverrun with Chinese coming here just to drop a baby on our shores to then bring in the entire family\u201d; and that Indians and Chinese had set up \u201cinternal mechanisms\u201d so that only people from their countries could get tech jobs in California.<\/p>\n \u201cA baby here becomes an instant citizen, and then they bring the entire family in from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet,\u201d Mr. Savage said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not like the European Americans of today and their ancestors,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s post comes as the Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of his executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for babies born to undocumented people and to some temporary foreign visitors. Mr. Trump has made rolling back birthright citizenship central to his campaign to expel millions of immigrants from the United States. He even attended<\/a> the oral arguments at the Supreme Court where, to his dismay, some of the conservative justices appeared skeptical<\/a> of the president\u2019s position.<\/p>\n Earlier on Wednesday, before he posted the podcast transcript, Mr. Trump had said in a separate Truth Social post<\/a> that \u201ccertain\u201d conservative justices on the Supreme Court had \u201cgone weak, stupid, and bad.\u201d He mentioned the birthright citizenship case, which the court is expected to decide this summer.<\/p>\n On Thursday, a spokesman for the White House, Kush Desai, defended Mr. Trump\u2019s post of the transcript, saying that the president was \u201ccalling out the scam of unfettered birthright citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n In recent years, Asians have been the fastest-growing group in the country, and people from India and China have accounted for the bulk of that increase. In 2023, Asians made up about 7 percent of the national population. By some measures, immigrants from India and China and their descendants have been among the most successful groups in the United States, with high levels of education and income.<\/p>\n But as the Trump administration has sought to limit most immigration pathways, both groups have also come under increasing scrutiny. The administration\u2019s changes to the H-1B program, a skilled worker visa that is especially popular among Indians, have fueled racist rhetoric<\/a> targeting the Indian community across the country.<\/p>\n The president\u2019s push to end birthright citizenship has also spurred more debate over birth tourism<\/a>, a term that refers to pregnant women who travel to the United States to give birth so that their baby can have American citizenship. It is most commonly associated with a cottage industry of \u201cmaternity hotels\u201d that has emerged over the past two decades and caters to wealthy families from countries like China.<\/p>\n The phenomenon of birth tourism is not believed to be widespread. In its most recent estimate in 2020, the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that supports restricting immigration, put the number at around 20,000 to 26,000 babies<\/a> a year \u2014 less than 1 percent of the number of babies born in the country. Nonetheless, birth tourism has become a frequent talking point for conservatives seeking to eliminate birthright citizenship for all.<\/p>\n Some Democratic lawmakers also criticized Mr. Trump for sharing the podcast transcript.<\/p>\n Representative Grace Meng, a Taiwanese American Democrat from New York and chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said in a statement that she was \u201cdisgusted\u201d by the post.<\/p>\n \u201cAt a time when hate incidents against South Asian communities are surging, and one in four Americans view Chinese Americans as a threat,\u201d she said, \u201camplifying this kind of bigotry pours fuel on an already dangerous fire and must be unequivocally condemned.\u201d<\/p>\n