National Political Reporter
WAshington Post
Congressional Reporter
Washington Post
Felicia Sonmez & Mike DeBonis report for the Washington Post:
President Trump said Sunday that four minority, liberal congresswomen who have been critical of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” prompting other Democrats — including Pelosi — to leap to their defense.
Pelosi denounced Trump’s tweets as “xenophobic comments meant to divide our nation,” while the four congresswomen promised to continue fighting Trump’s agenda and accused him of seeking to appeal to white nationalists.
Trump’s remark swiftly united a House Democratic caucus that had been torn apart in recent days by infighting between Pelosi and the four freshman women of color — Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.). It also comes as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are preparing to round up migrant families that have received deportation orders across the country.
Trump kicked off the furor with a string of tweets before heading to his golf club in Sterling, Va., on Sunday morning.
“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” Trump tweeted.
Pressley was born in Cincinnati, Tlaib was born in Detroit and Ocasio-Cortez was born in New York — about 20 miles from where Trump was born. Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia; her family fled the country amid civil war when she was a child, and she became a U.S. citizen as a teenager.
All four women won election to Congress in 2018.
In a follow-up tweet, Trump suggested that the four Democrats should leave Washington.
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he said. “Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
Trump’s tweets prompted a sharp response from Pelosi, who described them as racist and divisive.
Scenes from the third year of Trump’s presidency
“When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again,” she said in a tweet. “Our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power.”
The four Democratic lawmakers also fired back at Trump on Twitter. Omar wrote that “As Members of Congress, the only country we swear an oath to is the United States.”
Trump was “stoking white nationalism,” she argued, out of anger that she and other women of color are fighting in Congress against his “hate-filled agenda.”
Pressley shared a screenshot of Trump’s tweets and stated, “THIS is what racism looks like. WE are what democracy looks like. And we’re not going anywhere. Except back to DC to fight for the families you marginalize and vilify everyday.”
Tlaib warned Trump, “I am fighting corruption in OUR country. . . . Keep talking, you’ll be out of the WH soon.”
And Ocasio-Cortez sent a string of tweets defiantly addressing the president. “You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us,” she said. “You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.”
Mr. President, the country I “come from,” & the country we all swear to, is the United States.
But given how you’ve destroyed our border with inhumane camps, all at a benefit to you & the corps who profit off them, you are absolutely right about the corruption laid at your feet.
32K people are talking about this
Trump’s tweet came after House Democrats spent the prior week locked in internal tumult over whether Pelosi and House leaders have unfairly marginalized the four liberal freshmen. The firestorm reignited late Friday when the official House Democratic Caucus Twitter account attacked Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff for suggesting that Democrats had voted to “enable a racist system.” And on Saturday, Pressley made comments at the annual Netroots Nation conference that seemed to add to the conflagration.
But within a few hours on Sunday, Democratic lawmakers were united in defending their colleagues against Trump’s attack.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to bring everybody together — I think the president just did that for us,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said. “Nobody in our caucus is going to tolerate that kind of hatred. They’re not going to tolerate xenophobia, and they’re not going to tolerate racism. . . . This puts it all in perspective.”
Dingell, whose suburban Detroit constituency includes one of the largest Muslim American populations of any House district, said she was “furious” at Trump’s tweet and said it represented a direct attack on her community.
“It’s just stark hatred,” she said. “It’s absolute total hatred. He doesn’t know what he does to a community like the one that I live in when he does something like that. . . . It reinforces the fear of so many people in this country.”
Even lawmakers who have butted heads with the quartet of freshmen stood up for them on Sunday. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), co-chair of the centrist Problem Solvers Caucus and a frequent critic of the four, said in a tweet that Trump’s comments about them were “totally unacceptable and wrong.”
Some lawmakers pointed out Trump’s history of “birtherism” as well as the fact that the president’s wife, Melania, had immigrated to the United States. Melania Trump emigrated from Slovenia in 1996 for her modeling career.
“3 of 4 are American born and other is a citizen,” Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said of the four Democratic lawmakers in a tweet. “They are all ‘more’ American than 2 of Trumps wives (he seems partial to foreign women) and his grandparents.” Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, was born in what was then Czechoslovakia, and Trump’s grandparents and mother were born in Europe.
[House Democrats infighting escalates into all-out war]
Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) responded to Trump by recounting how, despite being born in the United States, he was repeatedly told to “go back to Mexico” from childhood through adulthood, regardless of his service in the Marine Corps or how well he did in school.
“To people like Trump I will never be American enough,” Gallego said in a tweet. “So if you wonder why I give no inch to these racists, now you know. Nothing will ever satisfy them, all we can do is stop them.”
Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said on “Fox News Sunday” that Trump’s tweet was “racist” and “wrong.”
“Telling people to go back where they came from? These are American citizens elected by voters in the United States of America to serve in one of the most distinguished bodies in the U.S. House of Representatives,” said Luján, who is assistant House speaker.
For years, Trump repeatedly raised doubts about former president Barack Obama’s birth certificate, making the issue part of his 2016 presidential run. He finally acknowledged in September 2016 that Obama was born in the United States — but falsely accused the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton of being the source of the rumor.
“Trump is now turning the same birtherism he directed at President Obama against women of color serving in Congress,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said. “Everyone should call this what it is: racism.”
Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.), a vocal Trump critic who recently left the Republican Party, also defended the four Democratic lawmakers.
“To tell these American citizens (most of whom were born here) to ‘go back’ to the ‘crime infested places from which they came’ is racist and disgusting,” Amash said in a tweet.
By late Sunday afternoon, at least 27 congressional Democrats, plus Amash, had used the words “racist” or “racism” on their Twitter accounts to describe Trump’s tweets.
Some Democrats went even further. “This is white nationalism,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who is running for president.
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, were largely silent Sunday. In television appearances, several Trump administration officials declined to defend the president’s tweets.
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Jake Tapper asked Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, whether he knew whom the president was talking about in his tweets.
“I don’t. I don’t,” Cuccinelli said.
Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, also declined to weigh in. “I think that you need to talk to the president about his specific tweets,” Morgan said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”
Jeh Johnson, who was homeland security secretary during the Obama administration, said Morgan had “ducked” the question. Johnson argued that by sending the inflammatory tweets, Trump was undermining his own administration’s efforts on a bipartisan immigration reform deal.
“I cannot believe a president of the United States would make a statement about foreign-born members of Congress, suggesting they go back from where they came from. … Americans should not become numb to this kind of language and offensive statements,” Johnson said on “Face the Nation.
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Trump continues to demonstrate why he is unfit for any public office, let alone the one he holds. And that goes for the anti-American Republicans who continue to support this vile, disgusting, and dangerous clown who desires nothing less than the destruction of America for his own amusement.
A-lso worth’s noting how “fellow Trumpeters” Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli and Mark Morgan ducked the question when an immediate and unqualified condemnation would have been in order.
PWS
07-14-19