Trump reportedly wondered why the 'pretty Korean lady' in his briefing wasn't negotiating with North Korea

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

As President Trump wades through the fallout from his reported comments that Haiti and several African states are "shithole countries," a story published Friday by NBC News claims that on two separate instances, Trump made prejudiced assumptions about White House visitors because of their ethnicity.

In a meeting last fall, the president apparently said that a female intelligence expert should be assisting the U.S. in its negotiations with North Korea purely because of her Korean heritage, NBC News reported. The unnamed woman was briefing the president about a hostage situation in Pakistan, NBC News explained, when the president asked her, "Where are you from?" Despite her response of "Manhattan," the president apparently kept digging and inquired about the origins of "[her] people" until she told mentioned that her parents were from Korea.

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Kelly O'Meara Morales

Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.