President Trump tweets with such frenzy and frequency that we have become almost inured to his rhetorical excesses. But there are times when you have to pay attention.
Over the weekend, Trump tweeted out a widely condemned attack on four Democratic congresswomen: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.). All four are freshmen lawmakers, women of color and outspoken, left-wing voices in the Democratic Party; only one, Omar, was born outside of the United States.
Yet Trump urged them to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came” and stated they all “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe.” The venom behind the tweets was unmistakable: Here was Trump openly questioning four minority women’s place in America. It was in keeping with the president’s lengthy history of white nationalism, from his “birtherist” campaign against America’s first black president, to his slurs at a Mexican American judge, to his preference for migrants from Norway over “shithole countries,” to his blanket attacks on Muslims, to his defense of white supremacist protesters, to his administration’s daily demonization of immigrants and minority communities.
View the complete July 16 article by Ishaan Tharoor on The Washington Post website here.