Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young told NBC's Chuck Todd everyone is redeemable on Sunday morning's edition of Meet The Press.
Todd was asking Young about the vulgar language used by President Donald Trump at a bipartisan Oval Office meeting on immigration on Thursday to describe Haiti, El Salvador and African nations where some immigrants come to the United States from.
Trump's comments have been denounced by lawmakers and others across the nation and around the world as offensive and racist.
"This is a difficult world and it doesn't help to label people," Young said. "You don't help someone who has an alcohol problem by calling him a drunk. You have to deal with the sickness."
On ABC's This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked US Rep. John Lewis (D-5th Dist. Georgia) about Trump's comments.
"I think he is a racist," Lewis said. "We have to stand up. We have to speak up and not try to sweep it under the rug."
Lewis says he will not attend Trump's State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, January 30.
Republican Georgia Senator David Perdue, a staunch Trump ally, and an attendee of the controversial Thursday afternoon meeting, later told Stephanopoulos the president did not use the vulgarity to describe Haiti, El Salvador and the African nations. He called the media reports a "gross misrepresentation" of the what occurred in the meeting.
Previously, Perdue had issued a statement saying he "did not recall" Trump making the statement, which itself contradicted reports by other attendees, including Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), which indicated that Trump had used the vulgarity. The reports were not denied by the White House press office.
