Trump targets four liberal congresswomen with tweets that Pelosi denounces as ‘xenophobic’ - The Washington Post

President Trump said Sunday that four 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 rally to their defense.

Pelosi denounced Trump’s tweets as “xenophobic comments meant to divide our nation.”

Trump’s remark, made in morning tweets, comes as the 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.) — has spilled into public view. 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.

“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.

“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.”

She also called on Trump to halt the planned ICE raids on Sunday and “work with us for humane immigration policy that reflects American values.”

Other Democrats also responded with outrage on the Sunday morning news shows.

“That’s a racist tweet. 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. I think that’s wrong,” Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said on “Fox News Sunday.”

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio called Trump’s tweets “another effort to divide people along lines of religion, ethnicity, origin, and create a country where there can’t be unity.”

“Unfortunately, there’s an American tradition of telling people to go back where they came from,” Luján said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It’s a very bad tradition that we need to weed out of our nation, because we are a nation of immigrants. That’s who we are by our nature for hundreds of years. But you don’t expect to hear it from the president of the United States.”

Host Jake Tapper later 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, saying on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” that it was up to the president to explain his tweets.

Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.

Let's block ads! (Why?)