During a fiery press conference on Monday, President Donald Trump doubled down on his racist “go back” rant against four progressive congresswomen.
Trump insisted that his tweets telling them to “go back” to the “crime infested” countries they supposedly come from (all but one of them were born in the US, and all of them are US citizens) weren’t racist.
“These are people who hate our country,” Trump said of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN). “All I am saying is if they’re not happy here, they can leave. They can leave and you know what I’m sure there’ll be many people that won’t miss them. They have to love our country.”
He zeroed in on Omar, the first hijabi to be elected in Congress, and falsely claimed that she spoke about “how wonderful al-Queda is” (at no point has Omar ever made that comment or otherwise endorsed the terrorist group).
Besides ranting about how Omar supposedly “hates Israel, hates Jews” and that the four congresswomen “hate our country,” Trump said he wasn’t bothered by white nationalists agreeing with his comments.
“It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me,” Trump said. “It doesn’t say ‘leave forever.’ It says ‘leave.'”
On Sunday, Trump went off on an unhinged Twitter rant about the four congresswomen.
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done,” Trump tweeted. “These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a resolution to condemn Trump’s “disgraceful language” on Monday.
Republican leadership has remained silent on Trump’s attacks.
Watch Trump below:
Trump says his "go back" tweets were "not at all" racist pic.twitter.com/oGELlpzAgi
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 15, 2019
Trump doubles down on "go back" tweets, rants about Ilhan Omar, AOC, Pressley, and Tlaib pic.twitter.com/LByLdEh9Qd
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 15, 2019
Just waiting on ‘Cecil’s’ response.
Keep doubling down man. The GOP had this debate 50 years ago. They knew that they needed to put a wrapper around racism to sell it. Reagan and Lee Atwater had it right. Unvarnished racism is a political loser and the country is less racist today than it was 40 to 50 years ago and whites are a smaller share of the total electorate.
Perfect leaking boat backdrop.
The racist-pig-in-chief has spoken.
BREAKING> A Blatant racist who makes blatantly racist statements insists he is not racist!