Trump Continues Attack on Congresswomen After Telling Them to ‘Go Back’
Three of the four women Trump was apparently referencing were born in the U.S.; none is white.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump continued his attack Monday on four female Democratic lawmakers, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, after his call for them to “go back” to where they came from was met with outcries of racism by Democrats -- and pushback from several Republicans.
Three of the four women Trump was apparently referencing were born in the U.S.; none is white. The comments came as U.S. authorities prepared raids to round up undocumented immigrants for deportation.
Republicans largely remained silent on the issue. Representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, said on Twitter that Trump “was wrong” to make the remark. One of Trump’s key allies in Congress, GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, offered his own advice to the president. “Mr. President you’re right about their policies, you’re right about where they’ll take the country. Just aim higher,” Graham said on Fox News.
Senator Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, said Trump’s statement was “wrong.” “We should defeat their ideas on the merits, not on the basis of their ancestry,” Toomey said in a statement.
Read More: May Says Trump Tweets on Democrats ‘Completely Unacceptable’
The tweets from Trump started Sunday and continued Monday morning and seemed aimed at first-term Representatives Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. “The Squad,” as the progressive quartet is known, has been engaged in an intra-party dispute with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump said the lawmakers “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” and should go back and help fix the countries and “then come back and show us how it is done.”
Trump later returned to Twitter to say it was “sad to see the Democrats sticking up for people who speak so badly of our Country and who, in addition, hate Israel.”
On Monday, Trump said in a tweet the “Radical Left Congresswomen” should apologize to “our Country, the people of Israel and even to the Office of the President, for the foul language they have used, and the terrible things they have said.”
Trump on Monday told reporters at the White House his comments were “not at all” racist. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said on Twitter that the president “loves this country & doesn’t like it when elected officials constantly disparage it & spew anti-Semitic rhetoric” and called on Democrats to get rid of “anti-Semitism in their ranks.”
Trump’s comments come as U.S. immigration officials prepare to conduct raids in about ten cities around the U.S. to round up individuals who’ve received deportation orders, and as reports continue to circulate about poor conditions for migrants in U.S. detention facilities on the U.S. border with Mexico.
The Trump administration also said Monday that it was going to end asylum protections for most Central American migrants who cross the U.S. southern border.
In response, Pelosi called the president’s tweets “xenophobic comments meant to divide our nation,” and Democratic Representative Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico decried “a racist tweet from a racist president.”
Ocasio-Cortez sent four tweets of her own, saying Trump was “angry” because he doesn’t “believe in an America” where women like those in the Squad are elected to Congress.
“You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder,” she said.
Pressley said on Twitter “THIS is what racism looks like. WE are what democracy looks like. And we’re not going anywhere.” Omar said Trump was “stoking white nationalism bc you are angry that people like us are serving in Congress and fighting against your hate-filled agenda.”
Tlaib was also blunt: “Want a response to a lawless & complete failure of a President?” she tweeted. “He is the crisis. His dangerous ideology is the crisis.”
Democratic presidential hopefuls also weighed in. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said that “unfortunately, there’s an American tradition of telling people to go back to where they came from” and that Trump was trying to “gin up his base” by keeping Americans divided.
“You don’t expect to hear it from the president of the United States,” de Blasio said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Lujan, assistant Speaker and a member of the Hispanic Caucus in the House, became emotional on “Fox News Sunday” when shown Trump’s tweet. “That is a racist tweet. Telling people to go back where they came from? I think that’s wrong,” he said.
Representative Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, noted in a tweet that “I’m young, from an immigrant family, also very critical of Trump. Funny thing though, he never tells me to ‘go back where I come from.’ Hmm I wonder why?”
Republicans mostly tried to stay out of the fray.
Graham, on Fox, encouraged Trump to “aim higher,” but went on to call the agenda of the four lawmakers “disgusting” and label them “communists,” “socialists” and “anti-Semitic.”
Pelosi last week told the New York Times that the vocal freshmen lawmakers were just “four people” among the Democratic House majority after a party split over a $4.6 billion border funding bill.
Among the lawmakers implied in Trump’s tweet, only one -- Omar, 37 -- was born outside the U.S. She migrated as a young girl with her Somalian family after spending four years in a refugee camp. Tlaib, 42, the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress, was born in Detroit.
The 45-year-old Pressley, an African-American, was born in Cincinnati and raised in Chicago. Ocasio-Cortez, 29, was born in New York to parents of Puerto Rican origin.
Trump’s comments echo the bigoted shouts that minorities hear daily to “go back where you came from,” said Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“If Trump shouted the same thing at a Muslim woman wearing hijab in a Walmart, he might be arrested,” Awad said in a statement.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, defeated by Trump in 2016, also responded to Trump’s tweet: “They’re from America, and you’re right about one thing: Currently their government is a complete and utter catastrophe.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net;Ros Krasny in Washington at rkrasny1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Gordon at cgordon39@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman, Kevin Whitelaw
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