Verbal anthrax: Trump poisons democracy, tweet by tweet

There’s debate about whether President Donald Trump’s weekend Twitter assault on four Democratic congresswomen is pure, straight-from-the-gut bigotry or a calculation designed to sow greater division among Democrats. It doesn’t matter.

The racist language, the willful ignorance and the incomprehension of American democratic values are unacceptable from the U.S. president.

This isn’t to suggest that The Dispatch supports the policies of the four congresswomen. That is not the point. Our aim is to support democracy and decency.

These outbursts by the president aren’t just “inappropriate,” “divisive” and “xenophobic,” all words used by the small minority of fellow Republicans who condemned the attacks. They are poison to our democracy.

In the latest trash-can fire, the president on Sunday unloaded on freshman Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-cortez of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. All are U.S. citizens and women of color with non-european ancestry.

All are left of the Democratic center and outspoken about their agendas to the point of conflict with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Enter Trump on Sunday, tweeting that the women “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe... Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Three of the four came from the United States. Omar was born in Somalia but has lived in the U.S. for nearly three decades.

Sunday’s final Trump tweet — “I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!” — supports the idea that

Trump was aiming at Democratic divisions.

But, again, his intent doesn’t make any difference to the damage his every toxic utterance does to the presidency and the country.

“America — love it or leave it!” was an ugly slogan employed in the 1960s against people who protested the Vietnam War by people who didn’t accept that dissent is both an American right and a patriotic duty. Trump is sad living proof that such sentiments live on today.

It appears that people of color with nonEuropean-sounding names — especially women inclined to confront him — are not part of the America Trump understands.

That view undermines the foundations — diversity, tolerance, respect and freedom to dissent

— on which our country was built. But a distressing number of Americans subscribe to it nonetheless, and for the president and top Republicans to endorse it is a dangerous disgrace.

Shame on South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. After allowing that the women are citizens and were duly elected, he said, “We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists. They hate Israel. They hate our own country.” That false, third-grade-level critique is a long way from 2016 candidate Graham, who accurately called Trump a “xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot.”

Among the Ohio GOP, Sen. Rob Portman and Rep. Troy Balderson condemned Trump’s outburst. Rep. Steve Stivers criticized it but also blamed Democrats. Predictably, Trump loyalist Rep. Jim Jordan of Urbana defended it.

As Trump persists in dragging the national discourse down to his level, those who ceded the Republican Party to him must take it back and restore the democracy he is degrading.