Alex Brandon/AP
On Sunday morning, President Donald Trump continued his week-long attack on four Democratic members of Congress, all of whom are women of color, by questioning their allegiance to the United States.
I don’t believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country. They should apologize to America (and Israel) for the horrible (hateful) things they have said. They are destroying the Democrat Party, but are weak & insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 21, 2019
Trump’s comments are the latest in a string of incendiary attacks by the president targeting the four representatives—Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—including his racist suggestion, made last weekend, that they “go back” to the “countries” from which “they came.” All four of the elected representatives are, of course, American citizens, who, in joining Congress, swore an oath to protect the United States. Only Omar, a Somali refugee naturalized in 2000, was born abroad.
Also on Sunday, the Washington Post published a long article looking at the fallout from last week’s tweets, reporting that people close to Trump had suggested he modify his attacks to move “away from the racist notion at the core of the tweets—that only European immigrants or their descendants are entitled to criticize the country.” Instead, the Post reports, “Advisers wrote new talking points… Pivot to patriotism. Focus on their ideas and behavior, not identity. Some would still see a racist agenda, the argument went, but at least it would not be so explicit.”
In his first tweet of the morning, Trump assailed the Post‘s reporting as “Fake News.” Less than 10 minutes later, he sent his latest tweet attacking the representatives’ patriotism.
