President Trump on Sunday assailed a group of Democratic congresswomen of color as foreign-born troublemakers who should go back to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came,” ignoring the fact that the women are American citizens and all but one was born in the U.S.
Trump’s tweets drew a sharp rebuke from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, who said the president wants to “make America white again.”
Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a Trump critic who recently took steps to leave his party, called the remarks “racist and disgusting.”
Trump was almost certainly referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and her allies in what’s become known as “The Squad.” The others are Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Only Omar, from Somalia, is foreign-born.
With his remarks, Trump again inserted himself into a rift between Pelosi and the progressive congresswomen, after offering an unsolicited defense of the Democratic speaker days earlier.
Pelosi has been seeking to minimize Ocasio-Cortez’s influence in recent days, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to accuse Pelosi of trying to marginalize women of color. “She is not a racist,” Trump said of the House speaker on Friday.
Then came Sunday’s tweets.