Trump prods Squad again
4 Dems not ‘capable’ of patriotism
President Trump continued to hammer away on Sunday at the four minority freshman lawmakers he’s been feuding with for a week, telling them they should “apologize” to America as a top White House aide accused Democrats of using racial labels to stymie critics.
“I don’t believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country. They should apologize to America (and Israel) for the horrible (hateful) things they have said,” the president said Sunday on Twitter. “They are destroying the Democrat Party, but are weak & insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation!”
Trump began assailing the four progressives known as “the Squad” — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar — in a series of tweets last Sunday.
Trump called for them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
All four are American citizens and only one of them, Omar, was born outside the country.
White House adviser Stephen Miller defended the president on Sunday, ripping the quartet and clashing with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace over the tweets.
Wallace ticked off Trump’s birtherism conspiracy theory against President Obama, his accusing Mexico of sending rapists and drug dealers to the US and his Muslim travel ban as evidence that Trump has been “playing the race card.”
“I couldn’t disagree more,” said Miller, who insisted Trump’s policies have benefited all Americans.
“I think the term ‘racist,’ Chris, has become a label that is too often deployed by the left, Democrats in this country simply to try to silence and punish and suppress people they disagree with, speech that they don’t want to hear,” said Miller, a key immigration aide to Trump, on “Fox News Sunday.”
He said comments by the congresswomen, including OcasioCortez’s comparing border detention facilities to concentration camps, are far worse than anything Trump has said.
“I’m a Jew,” Miller said. “As an American Jew I am profoundly outraged by the comments from Ocasio-Cortez. It is a historical smear. It is a sinful comment. It minimizes the death of 6 million of my Jewish brothers and sisters.”
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson also defended the president.
“He is not racist at all,” Carson told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“Jesse Jackson gave him an award for the incredible things that he had done in the African-American community,” Carson said.
It’s unclear exactly what award Carson was referring to, but Trump did donate office space to Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition at his 40 Wall Street building in 1997, garnering praise from the civil-rights leader at the time.
Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings defended the Squad from the accusations levied in Trump’s Sunday tweet.
“These are folks and women who love their country and they work very hard,” Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told ABC’s “This Week.”