Gov. Hogan says Trump tweets ‘very unbecoming’
Maryland Gov. Hogan criticized President Donald Trump’s tweets and comments that certain members of Congress should “go back” to other countries.
“I thought the comments were terrible and very unbecoming of a president,” Hogan said. “Totally inappropriate.”
The Republican governor’s statement Tuesday to WJZ-TV, while critical of the president, stopped short of calling Trump’s tweets racist, as they’ve been described by many.
Hogan’s office sent a link Wednesday morning to reporters with the quote as the governor headed to the annual J. Millard Tawes Crab and Clam Bake in Crisfield on the Eastern Shore.
Asked Wednesday by The Baltimore Sun whether the governor believes the president’s tweets were racist, a spokeswoman for Hogan said the governor had nothing to add to his statement.
Trump’s initial tweets Sunday targeted four Democratic congresswomen of color, saying they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Three of the four — Reps. Ayanna S. Pressley, of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, and Alexandria OcasioCortez, of New York — were born in the United States. Rep. Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota, was born in Somalia. Her family fled to the U.S. when she was a child.
Maryland’s only Republican in Congress, Rep. Andy Harris, defended Trump’s comments on Monday.
“He could’ve meant ‘ Go back to the district they came from’ (or) to ‘the neighborhood they came from,’ ” Harris said in an interview on WBAL-AM.
But a few hours later, Trump made it clear that he did, in fact, mean they should leave the country. “If you’re not happy in the U.S., if you’re complaining all the time, very simply, you can leave,” Trump said.
Trump tweeted that his comments were not racist. “I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!” the president tweeted Tuesday.
Democrats have been quick to blast Trump’s comments.
The U.S. House voted largely along party lines Tuesday night to condemn Trump’s tweets. The resolution “strongly condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.”
Maryland’s seven Democratic representatives voted for the resolution: Anthony Brown, Elijah Cummings, Steny Hoyer, John Sarbanes, Jamie Raskin, C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger and David Trone. Harris voted against it.
Raskin, a co-author of the resolution, said on the floor: “To tell naturalized American citizens to go back to the countries they came from is nativist and antithetical to everything America stands for.”