On Sunday, Nancy Pelosi shot back at the president for his “xenophobic” comments that she believes indicates that he really wants to make “America white again” when he says he wants to “make America great again.”
Donald Trump told several progressive lawmakers to go back to the “places from which they came,” in a tweet that many people are calling offensive and racist. The House leader took a strong stance against his messaging with a tweet of her own.
“I reject @realDonaldTrump’s xenophobic comments meant to divide our nation. Rather than attack Members of Congress, he should work with us for humane immigration policy that reflects American values. Stop the raids,” she said.
“When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again,” she wrote. “Our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power.”
The president tweeted on Sunday that he believed the “Progressive Democrat Congresswomen” who came from countries “whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” should stop telling the people of the United States how the government should be run. He then advised them to return to the “broken and crime infested” places they came from.
“These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough,” he wrote.
Trump’s tweet appears to be aimed at freshmen members of Congress who have been vocally working against the president and his agenda, like Alexandria Ocasi0-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar. Of the women the president attacked, only one wasn’t born in the United States, as The Inquisitr reported. Ocasi0-Cortez, the representative from New York, was born and raised in New York, Ayanna Pressley was born in Chicago, and Rashida Tlaib was born in Detroit. Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia before coming to the United States as a refugee with her family.
While Trump didn’t mention the lawmakers by name, his tweet comes after a week of escalating tensions between Pelosi and the four women.
He’s unmistakably referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and her allies in what’s become known as the squad. The others are Reps. Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. Three of those four were born in the U.S. https://t.co/eIv2MtYPy8
— SeattlePI (@seattlepi) July 14, 2019
Critics were quick to point out that the president was attacking women of color and called his message racist. Others said that as elected representatives, they’ve been essentially hired by their constituents to determine how the government should be run.
It’s not the first time that the California lawmaker has said that the president is hoping to “make America white again.” She has used the same criticism about his plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.