Meghan McCain is leading the charge against Donald Trump after the president’s controversial tweet claiming that three American-born congresswomen of color were not really born in the United States, with McCain slamming the tweets as “racist.”
On Sunday, Trump unleashed a series of tweets taking aim at four freshman members of Congress, all of whom happen to be women of color, saying he “doesn’t even know where they came from.” As Mediaite noted, Trump was singling out the Congress members who voted against the House version of the border bill — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). Omar immigrated to the United States from her native Somalia before becoming an American citizen, and the three others are American-born.
But in his tweets, Trump said that the members need to go back to their “original” countries rather than staying in the United States.
“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!” Trump wrote.
The tweets drew an immediate backlash, including members of his own party. Meghan McCain, daughter of Trump nemesis John McCain, openly called the president racist for his insinuation that the women of color must have been born outside the United States.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rips into Trump over “go back” tweet: “You cannot accept that we don’t fear you” https://t.co/Ptl7DSchGu
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) July 15, 2019
“This is racist,” she wrote on Twitter . “And I see Trump people are trying to spin this to just be about Rep. Omar, but we all know that’s a lie. But even if it were just about Rep. Omar, it would still be racist. We don’t tell people we’ve welcomed into this country to ‘go back.’ ”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit back at Trump as well, saying that she comes from the United States and has sworn an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution.
Reps. are condemning Trump after he told @AOC , @AyannaPressley , @RashidaTlaib , and @IlhanMN to ‘go back’ to their countries in these racist tweets pic.twitter.com/v5Ip5YXdkz
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 15, 2019
Donald Trump’s tweets echoed a recent attack on a Democratic presidential candidate. After the first round of Democratic presidential debates, some far-right figures began spreading false claims that California Senator Kamala Harris is not really African American and casting doubt on her citizenship. Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., fed into the accusations deemed by many to be fueled by racism when he re-tweeted one of the far-right figures who was pushing the idea that Harris was not really American.
