Going after four Democratic congresswomen one by one, a combative President Donald Trump turned his campaign rally into an extended dissection of the liberal views of the women of color, deriding them for what he painted as extreme positions and suggesting they just get out.
“Tonight I have a suggestion for the hate-filled extremists who are constantly trying to tear our country down,” Trump told the crowd in North Carolina, a swing state he won in 2016 and wants to claim again in 2020. “They never have anything good to say. That’s why I say, ‘Hey if you don’t like it, let ’em leave, let ’em leave.'”
Eager to rile up his base with the some of the same kind of rhetoric he targeted at minorities and women in 2016, Trump declared Wednesday night, “I think in some cases they hate our country.”
Trump’s jabs were aimed at the self-described “squad” of four freshmen Democrats who have garnered attention since their arrival in January for their outspoken liberal views and distaste for Trump: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. All were born in the U.S. except for Omar, who came to the U.S. as a child after fleeing Somalia with her family.
Taking the legislators on one at a time, Trump ticked through a laundry list of what he deemed offensive comments by each woman, mangling and misconstruing many facts along the way.
Omar came under the harshest criticism as Trump played to voters’ grievances, drawing a chant from the crowd of “Send her back! Send her back!”
She responded Wednesday night with a series of tweets, including one quoting Maya Angelou’s defiant poem, “Still I Rise,” with the words “You may shoot me with your words… But still, like air, I’ll rise.”
“I am where I belong, at the people’s house and you’re just gonna have to deal!” she wrote in another.
👋🏽 I am where I belong, at the people’s house and you’re just gonna have to deal! pic.twitter.com/W0OvDXGxQX
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) July 18, 2019
Trump set off a firestorm Sunday when he tweeted that the four should “go back” to their home countries — though three were born in the United States. Trump has accused them of “spewing some of the most vile, hateful and disgusting things ever said by a politician.”
He expanded on his criticisms in Greenville.
Among his complaints against Tlaib, Trump correctly reported that she had referred to the president by an expletive, “adding, “That’s not nice, even for me.” Trump himself had unloaded a vulgarity earlier in his speech, denouncing the Russia probe of his campaign and administration as “(expletive removed)”
As for Ocasio-Cortez, Trump fumbled over her name and declared, “I don’t have time to go with three different names.” He then referred to her as just “Cortez” as he challenged her complaints about dire conditions at migrant detention centers at the border.
In a lighter moment, Trump wondered if Pressley was related to Elvis Presley, then pivoted to more serious points, claiming she thought people of color should “think the same.”
As for Omar, Trump unfurled a whole list of complaints, including an accusation that she voiced pride in al-Qaida.
Before he left Washington, Trump said he has no regrets about his ongoing spat with the four. Trump told reporters he thinks he’s “winning the political argument” and “winning it by a lot.”
“If people want to leave our country, they can. If they don’t want to love our country, if they don’t want to fight for our country, they can,” Trump said. “I’ll never change on that.”
Trump’s harsh denunciations were another sign of his willingness to exploit the nation’s racial divisions heading into the 2020 campaign.
His speech was filled with Trump’s trademark criticisms about the news media, which he says sides with liberals, and of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. Mueller had been scheduled to testify Wednesday on Capitol Hill, but it was postponed . Trump brought him up anyway.
“What happened to me with this witch hunt should never be allowed to happen to another president,” he said.
He also talked about illegal immigration, a main theme of his first presidential bid that is taking center stage in his re-election campaign. He brushed off the criticism he has gotten for saying that the congresswomen should go back home.
“So controversial,” he said sarcastically.
The four Democratic freshmen have portrayed the Republican president as a bully who wants to “vilify” not only immigrants but all people of color. They say they are fighting for their priorities to lower health care costs and pass a Green New Deal addressing climate change while his thundering attacks are a distraction and tear at the core of American values.
The Democratic-led U.S. House voted Tuesday to condemn Trump’s “racist comments” despite near-solid GOP opposition and the president’s own insistence that he doesn’t have a “racist bone” in his body.
Trump hasn’t shown signs of being rattled by the House rebuke and called an impeachment resolution that failed in Congress earlier Wednesday “ridiculous.” The condemnation carries no legal repercussions, and his latest harangues struck a chord with supporter in Greenville, whose chants of “Four more years!” and “Build that wall!” bounced off the rafters.
It was Trump’s sixth visit to the state as president and his first 2020 campaign event in North Carolina, where he defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.
(AP)
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18 Responses
Only of them is an immigrant. The danger of a politician support nativism, is that traditionally “nativists” opposed all people decended from new immigrants, meaning those that arrived after the Revolution (the Indians have a similar doctrine, with a 1492 cutoff date). Note that Trump, like most Jews, is descended from 20th century immigrants which makes it sound very strange to hear him wanting to “send home” people whose families have been in America longer than his.
akuperma: Anyone who comes to America must adhere to the doctrine of “Love it or leave it”. No one asked Omar to come here. It must’ve seemed like a good idea to her at the time, considering the open sewer from which she immigrated. If, then, America is better than the place of her origin, what’s with all the anti-American rhetoric? If she put her feet where her mouth is (wait, she already has!), she would self-deport rather than being ridden out tarred and feathered on a rail, a fate that would be too compassionate for her.
Omar is the only immigrant in the group, and “Love it or leave it” is hardly a doctrine, and certainly not from a legal perspective. The better rule is ” “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
The Democrats would be quite content if people who disagree with them would also go back where they came from (a reminder, Trump, like other Ellis Island alumni, is still a recent immigrant). If the Democrats in win in 2020 (socialized medicine run as efficiently as the post office, persecution of those who reject politically correct truths, etc.), are you read to leave?
To Arizona from a former Arizonan (1966-1977): you express the Gentile hard-core view outstandingly. Now for the Jews. Plenty of us, frum or not, descend from Jewish socialists and communists who leaped off the boat into political agitation. By the early 1920s, antisemites seized on this “un-American” behavior to ram through anti-Jewish provisions of the 1924 immigration law. By 1945, uncountable Jews had died as a result. Then came the 1950s Red Scare with its antisemitic undertones. And on to today, with far-right *and* far-left antisemites alleging Jewish disloyalty. If heaven forbid it gains enough traction, your stance won’t help you.
truth is, every Jew should be ready to leave when Moshiach comes which can be at any time
This time around I agree with akuperma on the first part of his post. We should also be very, very aware that this is being watched and reported on in the foreign media. It is not going down well, and we can’t afford to alienate our allies just so Mr. Trump can be re-elected. His “America First” is rapidly becoming “America Alone.” Witness Turkey’s dropping the F-35 fighter program so they can purchase Russian air defense systems. We are swiftly losing any moral credibility we might have internationally.
You think, “So what?” Remember that the BDS movement brought down the previous South African government, and that BDS is getting a lot of traction in Europe and elsewhere. Israel can’t survive economically by doing business only with the US. If Israeli businesses lose all exports and investments from everybody besides the US, it’s going to be very, very tough. Bibi is besties with Donald, and the world is watching, and assuming that Donald’s tweets are also representing Bibi and Israel.
As Jews, we have heard hateful pronouncements such as these directed at us more times than we can count over the last 2000 years.
Representative Omar has been a US citizen far longer than the FLOTUS or her parents. I wonder if this chant includes the entire Knaus family who benefited from chain migration and the 3 children of the President whose mothers are naturalized citizens?
BTW the President, a known draft dodger, should never mention fighting for this nation in any of his speeches, it is disrespectful to all who have served.
Naftush-2 Agree. We became so comfortable in the US and sometimes forget how much they really hate us
To Amil Zola: Just to keep the facts right, Trump has 4 children by immigrant women (that we know about): Ivanka, Eric, Don Jr., and Baron.
And thank you, akuperma, for getting things right today.
Surprise! Today the degenerate lying adulterer says he was not happy with the chant! He didn’t say anything to his Klan to stop them. What a difference a day makes in trump’s fake world. He wasn’t a fan of Jeffrey Epstein either, so he says, facts show otherwise.
rt. RE: “As Jews, we have heard hateful pronouncements such as these directed at us more times than we can count over the last 2000 years.” Do you mean hateful rhetoric coming from the filthy mouth of your fellow Democrats Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tliab?
Amil Zola, rt, huju: you show our typical hypocritical determent syndrome towards Trump. I assume all of you support what a filthy mouth of Ilhan Omar says about the Jews.
akuperma: You’re a lawyer, therefore part of the problem. I don’t give two cents for legal perspectives. I did, though, serve three years in the US Army during Vietnam. My draft was high, but I enlisted anyway. I loved this country then, and even more so today. To this moment I retch remembering cowards, yes, COWARDS, burning their draft cards and/or fleeing to Canada or elsewhere on daddy’s dime. So to you and Naftush-2, don’t dare lecture me about patriotism. Between your filthy legal volumes and the Jewish paranoia of Naftush-2 and others here, there hasn’t been a land so loving of Jews since Spain during the lifetime of the Rambam.
Huju thanks, I guess I always think of Ivanka as a sister wife.
Arizona- no one questions your patriotism and if, indeed you served in Vietnam, we thank you.
But then, how can you support the Draft Dodger in Chief? How can you stomach his virulent attacks on a real American hero-John McCain? How can you not gag on his racist and demagogic comments ‘to go home’ to AMERICANS?? So,, those people you call cowards, do include your Draft Dodger in Chief. And spare me your crocodile tears for the United States being the greatest loving nation of Jews. Just read “the Abandonment of Jews” about the shameful conduct of the State department and multiple anti semitic politicians during WWII that allowed the death of our millions of brothers and sisters.
Only antisemytes, including “Jewish” ones , have no problem with Jew-hatred and America-hatred spewed from the filthy mouths of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib, but are outraged by Trump calling them out about their bigotry.