Donald J. Trump needs to read more. He needs to understand the world. He needs to get a grip on the world as it is, as it has been and what it will become.

The president has declared that immigration is destroying Europe’s “culture.” Now, think about that for a moment.

Europe comprises disparate nations. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a handful of them. Greece is nothing like The Netherlands; Germany and Denmark are separate nations with unique identities; Sweden and Great Britain are worlds apart.

My point is that there is no such thing as a monolithic European “culture.”

However, the president took time this week to disparage immigrants who are going to Europe, many of them fleeing persecution in their home countries, some of which I’ll presume Trump thinks of as “sh**holes.”

Donald Trump once again is revealing a sinister element of his world view. It suggests to me a deep-seated racist and xenophobic view of how the world should be.

As The Hill reported: The president’s comments during his interview with The Sun, however, highlighted Trump’s deeply held skepticism of immigration and resurfaced a line of attack that he had used often on the campaign trail — that Europe was being overrun by non-Europeans and was quickly becoming a shell of what it once was.

“I think you are losing your culture,” he told the tabloid. “Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist ten or 15 years ago.”

Donald Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

For the president of the United States — which used to welcome people from throughout the entire rest of the world — to seek to slam the door shut on immigrants is to ignore our own country’s history.

Indeed, the United States of America’s culture is a conglomeration of many cultures. Each of them is unique and each of them has contributed mightily to the greatness that defines America.

Now he’s spreading his anti-immigrant poison to Europe?

Disgraceful.