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Trump Defends 'Racist' Attack on Congresswomen After Telling them to ‘Go Back’
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July 15, 2019
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Jul 15, 201911:11Now PlayingPresident 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.
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.”
n 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.”
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