President Trump inevitably doubled down on his racist attacks on progressive Democratic women of color, slandering Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as “Communists” and enemies of the United States in a Monday morning Twitter rampage.
A few hours later, at a manufacturing summit, he falsely accused Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is Muslim, of supporting terrorist group al-Qaeda and of being an anti-Semite.
Trump accuses Ilhan Omar of “speaking about how wonderful Al Qaeda is.” Says she “hates Jews.” pic.twitter.com/f9C9gvyUhn
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 15, 2019
While it’s absolutely repulsive and horrifying to see the President of the United States casually employing naked racism to besmirch his political rivals, it does have the silver lining of prompting the Democrats to put aside their petty feud and stand united against the white supremacist in the Oval Office.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced on Monday morning that the House would be drafting a resolution of condemnation against the president for crossing the line.
“This morning, the President doubled down on his attacks on our four colleagues suggesting they apologize to him. Let me be clear, our Caucus will continue to forcefully respond to these disgusting attacks” wrote Pelosi in a letter to the House Democrats.
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In an inevitably futile but necessary appeal across the aisle, Pelosi went on to demand that her Republican colleagues to follow suit. “The House cannot allow the president’s characterization of immigrants to our country to stand. Our Republican colleagues must join us in condemning the president’s xenophobic tweets!”
It’s now been nearly 24 hours and not one single elected Republican, NOT ONE, spoke out against Trump openly telling four women of color in Congress to “go back” to the countries they came from.
He literally said they “couldn’t leave soon enough.”
It represents a new low.
— Shaun King (@shaunking) July 15, 2019
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Not one — not one — Republican said anything about Trump’s remarks yesterday. Following the President’s latest wave of vitriol, a few have begun to speak out — but have all cushioned their weak and insincere wrist-slaps with unnecessary shots at “socialist” Democrats, reinforcing the president’s attacks even as they ostensibly criticize them.
Racism is and has always been the animating force behind the Republican Party, no matter how hard the enabling “moderates” protest otherwise. The ugliness of the president’s racist attacks hopefully will be a wake-up call to all factions in the Democratic party to put aside the difference they may have — differences, we should note, that emerged from a debate over the best way to confront Trump’s racist policies in the first place — and stand united against an open white supremacist and his political allies, all of whom are clearly unconcerned with the president’s dangerous rhetoric.
Original reporting by Heather Caygle and John Bresnahan at POLITICO.
