RANTING & RACE-BAITING
TRUMP RAMPS UP FACT-CHALLENGED ATTACK ON DEM ‘SQUAD’
President Trump is ratcheting up the racism — and Republican leaders aren’t making a peep.
Trump on Monday falsely accused Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar of being an Al Qaeda supporter while repeating and expanding on his shocking claims that she and three other women of color in Congress should “go back” to their own countries.
“We’re at war with Al Qaeda, and she’s somebody talking about how great Al Qaeda is,” Trump said during an event at the White House that was supposed to focus on promoting American manufacturers. “That was Omar. How great Al Qaeda is … She said you can hold their chest out, you can, ‘When I think of America, huh. When I think of Al Qaeda, I can hold my chest out.’ ”
The Minnesota congresswoman — who’s one of only two Muslims in Congress — has never voiced support for Al Qaeda, despite Trump’s claims.
The president’s baseless comments came one day after he tweeted that Omar and the three other members of a progressive group of House Democrats known as the “Squad” — all of whom are U.S. citizens — should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested” countries “from which they came.”
After making the false assertion about Al Qaeda, Trump defended his Twitter claims about Omar and fellow left-leaning Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
“All they do is complain. All I’m saying, if they want to leave, they can leave,” Trump said. “If they are not happy here, they can leave. They can leave, and you know what? I’m sure there will be many people that wouldn’t miss them.”
Meanwhile, the two top Republicans in Congress — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — stayed silent, declining repeated requests for comment on Trump’s remarks.
Eighteen other Republican lawmakers issued some criticism of Trump on Monday — ranging from sharp to muted.
Long Island Rep. Pete King called the president’s tweets “very inappropriate and wrong,” but refused to use the term racist to describe Trump’s comments.
“I don’t think he’s a racist, but I think the comments can be interpreted in a very negative way. They could inflame racist tendencies that people may have,” King told the Daily News. “You have to be careful with what you say.”
Other Republicans came out in full support of Trump.
Rep. Lee Zeldin, another Republican from Long Island, put blame squarely on the “Squad” and tweeted that “anyone in the US with a blame America 1st mentality for everything needs to do some serious self reflection, especially if they are a Member of Congress.”
Along with Zeldin, upstate Rep. Chris Collins was the only Republican in the New York congressional delegation to fail to condemn Trump and instead accused Democrats of “deflection.” The other Republicans from the Empire State — Reps. Tom Reed, John Katko and Elise Stefanik — issued generic statements criticizing the president.
Nationally, only six Republican senators — Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Tim
Scott of South Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania — rebuked Trump over his remarks, joining a larger number of
House Republicans, including Mike Turner of Ohio, who sounded more like a Democrat in his pushback.
“Trump’s tweets from this weekend were racist and he should apologize,” Turner tweeted at the president. “We must work as a country to rise above hate, not enable it.”
Democrats expressed near-universal censure for Trump. However, the only plan of action announced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was to move ahead with a resolution condemning the rhetoric.
Omar, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is the only foreign-born member of the “Squad,” having immigrated as a refugee from Somalia. OcasioCortez was born and raised in the Bronx and Westchester County; Pressley is from Chicago and Tlaib is from Detroit.
During a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on Monday afternoon, Omar was asked about the president’s wild accusation.
“I will not dignify it with an answer because I know that every single Islamophobe, every single person who is hateful, who is driven by an ideology of other-ing as this president is, rejoices in us responding to that and us defending ourselves,” Omar said, standing alongside the other members of the “Squad.”
Ocasio-Cortez chimed in by taking a shot at Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.
“I am not surprised when the president says that four sitting members of Congress should, quote, ‘go back to their own country,’ when he has authorized raids without warrants on thousands of families across this country,” the New York lawmaker said, referring to this past weekend’s federal immigration activity. “I am not surprised that he used the rhetoric that he does when he violates international human rights and takes thousands of children away from their families.”