Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the least of Nancy Pelosi’s problems
Republican strategist Colin Reed explains.
President Trump squared off with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and four of her progressive freshman members on Twitter Sunday, and told them to go back to their countries of origin to fix the corruption plaguing those nations before they lecture the United States.
In the tweet, Trump referred to them as “progressive Democratic Congresswomen” whose home countries are collapsing from corruption and said they should return home to aid those who are suffering.
He also said their departure would please Nancy Pelosi and suggested she would even cover the cost of their travel.
Trump’s tweets prompted a backlash from several members of Congress, including Pelosi and Michigan’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
The Speaker of the House responded to Trump’s tweet shortly thereafter and said the issue was not about policy but about race, claiming the president wants to “make America white again.”
She also called Trump’s comments xenophobic and asked for an end to all ICE raids, in favor of bipartisan immigration reform.
New York congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez flipped the script on Trump in her Twitter reply and blamed him for the corruption and lawlessness at the southern border and accused him of purposely instilling fear while being driven by anger.
Meanwhile, Tlaib tweeted out a call for impeachment in response to Trump’s comments and said he represents the real crisis, not the immigration issues on the southern border.
Ocasio-Cortez, who is Puerto Rican, was born in the Bronx, New York, and raised in suburban Westchester County. Pressley, the first black woman elected to Congress is from Massachusetts but was born in Cincinnati. Tlaib, who along with Omar became one of the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress, was born in Detroit
Omar is the first Somali native elected to the House and despite being born in Somalia, she spent much of her childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp as a civil war tore her country apart. She is the only one of the four to not be born on American soil.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamist Relations (CAIR) condemned Trump’s comments and issued a statement through their National Executive Director Nihad Awad:
“Trump’s latest racist tweets echo the bigoted shouts of ‘go back where you came from’ heard daily by American Muslim women and children, immigrants and members of other minority communities across our nation. It is sad to see the occupant of the Oval Office transition from empowering and encouraging racist taunts to actually using them himself,” Awad said. “If Trump shouted the same thing at a Muslim woman wearing hijab in a Walmart, he might be arrested.”
Omar has fundraised for CAIR, the influential civil rights group for Muslims. CAIR has been condemned by conservatives, who say the group unfairly labels its critics Islamophobic.
Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, who said he is leaving the GOP due to Trump’s policies and was the only Republican to call for his impeachment, also weighed in on the debate and called the president a disgusting racist.
Matt Wolking the deputy director of communications for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, got in on the action as well and said the media was already mischaracterizing the president’s comments.
“Anyone who says the president told members of Congress to go back to where they came from is lying,” he wrote on Twitter. “He told them to “Then come back and show us how it is done.”
Last week Pelosi was caught in a public feud with her four progressive freshman members: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. Ocasio-Cortez had been publicly acrimonious in her responses to Pelosi and accused the speaker of giving her busy work to keep her quiet and out of the way.
On Sunday, the Washington Post’s Global opinions editor Karen Attiah blamed Pelosi for Trump’s comments and said her harsh criticism of her own members gave the president an opening to attack.
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As of the publishing of this story, Omar, and Pressley have yet to directly respond, via social media or Twitter to the President’s tweet.
