WASHINGTON — President Trump said Sunday that four women of color in Congress should go back to the “broken and crime infested” countries they came from, ignoring the fact that all of the women are American citizens and three were born in the United States.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said Mr. Trump wants to “make America white again.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) said the President “can’t conceive of an America that includes us.”
Mr. Trump was likely referring to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and her House allies in what’s become known as “the squad.” The others are Reps. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.).
Only Ms. Omar, from Somalia, is foreign-born.
“Mr. President, the country I come from, & the country we all swear to, is the United States,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.”
Ms. Omar also addressed herself directly to Mr. Trump via Twitter.
“You are stoking white nationalism [because] you are angry that people like us are serving in Congress and fighting against your hate-filled agenda,” she wrote.
With his Twitter post, Mr. Trump inserted himself further into a rift between Ms. Pelosi and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, just two days after he offered an unsolicited defense of the House speaker.
Ms. Pelosi has been seeking to minimize Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s influence in the House Democratic caucus in recent days, prompting Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to accuse Ms. Pelosi of trying to marginalize women of color.
“She is not a racist,” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Pelosi on Friday.
On Sunday, his tone turned.
“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,” he wrote on Twitter.
“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.”
“These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, was born in the Bronx, N.Y., and raised in suburban Westchester County.
Ms. Pressley, the first black woman elected to the House from Massachusetts, was born in Cincinnati.
Ms. Tlaib was born in Detroit.
Ms. Omar, the first Somali native elected to Congress and one of its first Muslim women, was born in Somalia but spent much of her childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp as civil war tore apart her home country. She immigrated to the United States at age 12, teaching herself English by watching American TV and eventually settling with her family in Minneapolis.
Few Republicans weighed in on the President’s comments.
Congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, did not respond to requests for comment.
Shortly after the Twitter posts, the President defended conditions at a border detention facility where hundreds of migrant men are being held.
He wrote on Twitter that the children’s rooms that Vice President Mike Pence saw during a tour on Friday were “well run and clean” while facilities for single men were “clean but crowded.”
Mr. Pence’s tour was meant to show that the Trump Administration is providing adequate care for migrants but needs more money from Congress to do it.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) participated in a tour of the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, saying a 25-year-old immigrant’s words summed up what he learned during the visit.
“I don’t know what it means to be without anxiety,” said Senaida Navar, who is currently protected from deportation under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals but whose father was recently deported. “And so that really is not a dignified way to live.”
“I would love it if my colleagues in the Congress heard that,” Mr. Brown told Mr. Navar during an event organized by the Border Network for Human Rights to discuss what immigrants and other migrants are experiencing at the border.
Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) was at the border Friday with Mr. Pence.
“It should now be clear to everyone that we have a crisis on our southern border. This trip reinforced for me that the situation is dire and Congress needs to take bipartisan action now to alleviate the crisis,” Mr. Portman said.
In El Paso Sunday, Mr. Brown was critical of the President’s policies about immigration. Mr. Brown said the United States should be a refuge for people fleeing violence and persecution.
“It doesn’t mean we have open borders and let everybody in, of course,” he said. “It does mean, if somebody has been victimized by drug violence or if they’ve been kidnapped or almost kidnapped, that we ought to say come to our country and we know you’ll work hard.”
First Published July 15, 2019, 4:31 a.m.
