WASHINGTON, July 14, 2019 — President Trump on Sunday cribbed a line from a Jim Crow past most Americans hoped was well behind them, by suggesting that the four progressive House Democrats collectively known as ‘the squad’ should return to the countries associated with their ethnic backgrounds.
“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 Sunday morning, just before leaving for yet another round of golf at a Trump Organization property.
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how t 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!” he added.
Trump’s tweet was directed at four freshman Democrats with minority backgrounds who’ve have often drawn the ire of both Republicans and more moderately-minded Democrats since joining the House in January, and was reminiscent of taunts hurled at civil rights activists in the Jim Crow south, telling them to “go back to Africa.”
Two of them, Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., are the first Muslim-American women ever elected to Congress, while the other two gained their seats by defeating more moderate veterans.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., became the youngest person ever elected to the House after knocking off then-Democratic caucus chair Rep. Joseph Crowley in a shocking primary upset. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., took a similarly meteoric path to Washington by defeating then-Rep. Mike Capuano, a 20-year veteran of the House.
Despite Trump’s insistence that all four should “go back,” most have nowhere to go back to except their home states.
While Tlaib is of Palestinian descent, she was born in Detroit, Michigan. Pressley, the Massachusetts freshman, was born in Ohio, Ocasio-Cortez, the Bronx (despite suggestions from her Republican critics that she is from Puerto Rico, which is part of the United States and not a foreign nation).
Only Rep. Omar, who came to the United States as an 11-year-old refugee after her family fled Somalia, was born abroad, but she has been a citizen since 2000.
The first Somali-American to serve in Congress, Omar has been the subject of a constant drumbeat of attacks from the more conspiracy-minded corners of conservative media since she won the seat vacated by now-Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who’d been the first Muslim-American elected to Congress.
And although tensions between Ocasio-Cortez and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had been flaring since the foursome broke ranks to vote against a supplemental appropriations package they said lacked provisions for oversight of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies, Pelosi on Sunday was one of the first to weigh in in defense of the so-called “squad.”
“When [Trump] 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 tweeted.
Also speaking up in their defense was Tlaib’s fellow Michigander, Rep. Justin Amash.
Amash, who recently became an independent after bolting the GOP this past July 4, called Trump’s comments “racist and disgusting.”
