Maybe I’m just getting desensitized to Trump’s schtick, but I’m having trouble getting alarmed by his “s**thole countries” remarks. First off, yesterday’s now-famous meeting was in the Oval Office and there were eight lawmakers in the room. Unlike his previous televised immigration spectacle, yesterday’s meeting was behind closed doors and I’m sure it was intended to get more substantive results. It seems to me there are ground rules before going into such meetings, and the conversations are typically not reported with any detail, but that was not the case here. Or am I wrong? Doesn’t bawdiness and basic jackassery usually just stay in the room? Or was his “s**thole countries” comment just too salacious to stay quiet about? I mean, it was mostly men in the meeting and they’re not above some salty language and jokes.

Second thing, Trump’s “s**thole countries” comment can be interpreted in more than one way. Maybe in his mind Haiti, El Salvador and most of the African continent really are s**tholes, or maybe not. Maybe he was referring to the s**thole governments running the aforementioned nations. By that measure, add Venezuela to the “s**thole” list. Maybe Trump, inarticulate fella that he is, was talking in shorthand. The Dominican Republic shares the same island as Haiti, and its socioeconomics are good enough for Trump to have invested there (a hat tip to the Soros-funded scowlers at Center for American Progress). Costa Rica is not a s**thole and but a couple hundred miles from El Salvador. I suspect Trump intended to mean governments that are s**tholes, not entire nations or peoples.

Third, on the topic of temporary protected status and the umbrage taken by the Left, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, goes like this: “You keep using that word, temporary. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The Obama administration didn’t know the word’s meaning for certain, given that “temporary” for El Salvador is eighteen years. The folks on temporary protected status are here by mutual agreement and by our good graces. They do not have the right to be on American soil, which is another concept that frustrates liberals to no end.