US President Donald Trump’s Twitter attacks have been described as racist on Sunday shortly after he attacked a group of Democratic congresswomen on Twitter, telling them to go back where they came from despite being American citizens.
While Trump did not name the women, he was referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
“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,” said Trump on Twitter.
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Trump’s tweets drew sharp rebukes from the Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the president wants to “make America white again”.
Republican Justin Amash of Michigan, a Trump critic who recently took steps to leave his party, called the remarks “racist and disgusting”.
Ocasio-Cortez swiftly denounced his remarks. “Mr. President, the country I ‘come from’, & the country we all swear to, is the United States,” she said in a Twitter post.
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. https://t.co/HLKQCotR8T
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 14, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, was born in the Bronx, New York, and raised in suburban Westchester County.
Pressley, the first black woman elected to the House from Massachusetts, was born in Cincinnati. Tlaib was born in Detroit.
Omar, the first Somali native elected to Congress and one of its first Muslim women, was born in Somalia but spent much of her childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp as civil war tore apart her home country.
She immigrated to the US aged 12, teaching herself English by watching American TV and eventually settling with her family in Minneapolis.
Just a reminder to the entire planet:
The majority of Americans did NOT vote for @realDonaldTrump— Randy Bryce (@IronStache) July 14, 2019
With his remarks, Trump again inserted himself into a rift between Pelosi and the liberal congresswomen, after offering an unsolicited defence of the Democratic speaker days earlier.
Pelosi has been seeking to minimise Ocasio-Cortez’s influence in recent days, prompting her to accuse Pelosi of trying to marginalise women of colour.
“She is not a racist,” Trump said on Friday before changing his tone on Sunday in the tweets.
‘A nation of immigrants’
The attacks may have been meant to further the divides within the Democrat caucus, strained over internal debates on liberal policies and on whether to proceed with impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Instead, Democrats, as one voice, denounced the comments, which evoked the old racist trope of telling a black person to go back to Africa.
“Unfortunately there is an American tradition of telling people to go back where they came from,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democratic presidential contender, said on CNN.
”It’s a very bad tradition that we need to weed out of our nation because we are a nation of immigrants, that is who we are by our nature for hundreds of years. But you don’t expect to hear it from the president.”
I don’t get the liberals who need to believe Trump’s racism is just an act to lure in the faceless masses. Trump’s racism is entirely sincere, as is his hatred of women.
— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) July 14, 2019
It was far from the first time that Trump has been accused of holding racist views.
His political career was launched on the backs of falsely claiming that President Barack Obama was not born in the US. In his campaign kickoff in June 2015, he deemed many Mexican immigrants “rapists”.
And last year, during a White House meeting on immigration, he wondered why the US was admitting so many immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador and several African nations.
