In a three-tweet tirade, President Donald Trump told progressive congresswomen to go back to their “totally broken and crime infested” countries of origin and sneered at the infighting rocking the Democratic Party.
“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” the president tweeted on Sunday.
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he continued.
Trump’s tweet targeted a handful of hotshot progressive congresswoman informally known by the millennial moniker ‘The Squad’: New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib, Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, and Massachusetts’ Ayanna Pressley.
Despite Trump’s line of attack, only one of the squad actually hails from outside the United States. Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia, and arrived in the US at the age of 12 after fleeing her country’s civil war. Her persistent criticism of Trump and American foreign policy has led right-wing pundits to blast her as un-American, with Fox News host Tucker Carlson accusing her of harboring “undisguised contempt for the United States and for its people” in a segment aired on Tuesday.
All of the squad have emerged not only as fierce critics of Trump’s immigration policies, but also at loggerheads with their own party’s leader, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. After voting against a House border security bill last month, the squad trashed moderate Democrats who helped pass the legislation, accusing them of caving to the White House and perpetuating the separation of immigrant families they railed against. The millennial lawmakers have also clashed with Pelosi over their support for the Green New Deal and Medicare for All – expensive liberal policies that have become lightning rods for Republican ridicule.
Pelosi snapped back. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” the 79-year-old Democrat told the New York Times, “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got,” referring to their inability to block the border bill.
Ocasio-Cortez played the intersectional card and insisted Pelosi was unfairly targeting “newly elected women of color,” while her spokesman and progressive activist, Corbin Trent, told the Washington Post that the Democratic Party is gripped by “cowardice” and led by an older generation “driven by fear.”
With a gulf widening in the party, Trump threw in one of his trademark digs. “I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements,” he said, taunting the progressives.
Pelosi later called Trump's Sunday tweetstorm "xenophobic," and said that the president plans on "making America white again," a phrase the speaker has used before to criticize his agenda. Though Trump's insults and jibes often elicit a negative response, commentators took particular issue with his latest outburst, pointing out that America has been a home to immigrants since the country's founding.
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