Republicans built this

Far better to be a party divided, as Democrats seem to be, than a party in thrall to a bigoted, xenophobic demagogue. Donald Trump is not only the president who has demeaned “shithole countries,” who has smeared Mexican migrants writ large as “rapists” and criminals, who urged a ban on all Muslims entering the United States.

Sunday, he attacked a group of first-term congresswomen who have criticized him, all but one of whom were born in America, by telling them to go back to their home countries.

The moral outrages mount. One, that Trump assumes people with brown skin cannot be native-born Americans. That is a wideopen window into his pathetic psyche.

Two, that Trump aims special animus at people from countries with governments he says have failed, by which he clearly means

nations in the developing world, by which he clearly means nations without many white people.

Three, that Trump believes that people born elsewhere in the world, who then join our great nation, cannot criticize this government. Tell that to the millions who fled pogroms in Eastern Europe, who escaped the Nazis, who left the Soviet Union, only to become indispensable contributors to American life.

We do not defend some of Ilhan Omar’s words, and we disagree frequently with the other targets of Trump’s scorn.

But to say these four Americans should go back to where they came from is to cross a bright line. It is, we believe, essentially racist. It is xenophobic. It is un-American.

Every elected Republican who fails to condemn this, and so far that is most elected Republicans, is complicit in spreading the virus. Deepest shame on all of them.