Just Go Back, Trump Tells 4 Women Lawmakers of Color

Pelosi says president wants to 'make America white again'
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 14, 2019 11:15 AM CDT
Just Go Back, Trump Tells 4 Citizen-Lawmakers of Color
From left, Ilhan Omar, Bernie Sanders and Pramila Jayapal listen as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks outside the Capitol last month.   (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Four Democratic congresswomen of color should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came," President Trump said Sunday. The lawmakers—Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar— all are US citizens, the Washington Post points out. Omar's family fled Somalia when she was a child, during civil war; she was a teenager when she became a US citizen. Trump didn't name the lawmakers but said he was referring to "'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen." The four women were elected to Congress last year. They have been critical of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at times, and Trump's tweet said they are "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."

Pelosi answered by saying Trump wants to "make America white again." She added in a tweet, “Our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power." Asked about Trump's comment on Fox News Sunday, Democratic lawmaker Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico said: "That’s a racist tweet. Telling people to go back where they came from? These are American citizens elected by voters in the United States of America to serve in one of the most distinguished bodies, in the US House of Representatives." On CNN, per Politico, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democratic candidate for president, said Trump's goal "is make America hate again." (Pelosi has pushed back on criticism from the four congresswomen.)

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