Trump Demands Poem on Statue of Liberty Be Revised to Exclude Shithole Countries

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

12 January 18

The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."

onald J. Trump demanded on Thursday that the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty be revised immediately to exclude nations he considered “shithole countries.”

Speaking to reporters, Trump said that the poem as it currently stands “is basically an open invitation that says, like, if you come from a shithole country, welcome aboard.”

“I don’t know the entire poem, but it’s something like ‘Give us your tired, your poor, your yadda yadda yadda,’ ” he said. “We could keep all that but then put in, right at the end, in big letters, maybe, ‘except if you’re from a shithole country.’ ”

“I think if a boat from a shithole country came and saw that poem with those words at the end, they would turn around and go right back to wherever they came from,” he said.

Shortly after Trump made his remarks about “shithole” countries, representatives of the countries he designated as such released a joint response.

“We do not understand President Trump’s aversion to so-called ‘shithole countries,’ since he is doing his best to turn the United States into one,” the statement read.