Donald Trump told four non-white Democratic congresswomen to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” in a series of astonishingly racist tweets on Sunday morning. Sunday night and Monday morning, he piled on more racist attacks, accusing the women of “foul language & racist hatred.” Projection: It’s a real thing.
For the record, Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were all born in the United States, so Trump was suggesting that the U.S. government is “a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world,” to which Hillary Clinton tweeted, “They're from America, and you're right about one thing: Currently their government is a complete and total catastrophe.” A host of other Democrats similarly came to the defense of the four women (Rep. Ilhan Omar is the fourth), as did British Prime Minister Theresa May, who said “the language that was used to refer to these women was completely unacceptable.”
The women Trump targeted knew exactly what was going on with that, and didn’t hesitate to call it out. “You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “THIS is what racism looks like. WE are what democracy looks like. And we’re not going anywhere. Except back to DC to fight for the families you marginalize and vilify everyday,” Pressley wrote.
But Tlaib also raised a frightening prospect, tweeting that “My biggest fear is that he is intentionally distracting us from the fact that ICE is knocking on doors without warrants right now. He is distracting us from the fact that colleagues are at the border reporting on the horrific and inhumane conditions.” So let’s be focused on what’s going on: Trump is racist, in his tweets and in his policies, and both matter.