Trump escalates attack on ‘squad’
United States
President Donald Trump ignored Republican misgivings and renewed his attack on a group of radical Democratic congresswomen yesterday, branding them hate-filled antiamerican zealots.
He faced criticism from Democrats and some in his own party after urging four ethnic minority representatives to ‘‘go back’’ to countries ‘‘they originally come from’’, despite three being born in the United States. Rather than pull back, Trump intensified his assault.
On Twitter, he branded ‘‘the squad’’, as the four women are known, antisemitic communists who spewed racial hatred. They should leave the US ‘‘if they don’t like it here’’, he added.
Later, he launched into a fiveminute tirade against them on the steps of the White House at an event for entrepreneurs, targeting in particular the only one who was born abroad: Ilhan Omar, 37, a congresswoman for Minnesota who was born in Somalia.
His renewed attacks came as his administration announced a tough new asylum rule that would effectively prevent anyone apart from Mexicans being allowed to cross the southern US border on humanitarian grounds. It stipulates that asylum seekers will not be accepted if they have passed through another country where they could have made an application for refugee status.
The legislation was set to face a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union, which declared: ‘‘The rule, if upheld, would effectively eliminate asylum for those at the southern border. It is patently unlawful.’’
Democratic strategists saw Trump’s focus on the four young left-wingers as part of a concerted effort to rouse his base by painting the Democratic Party as captured by unpatriotic socialists. It also revived his antiimmigrant message and placed it firmly back on the front line for the 2020 election campaign, despite his failure to increase deportations or build the wall he promised along the border in 2016.
‘‘With his deliberate, racist outburst, @realdonaldtrump wants to raise the profile of his targets, drive Dems to defend them and make them emblematic of the entire party,’’ David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote on Twitter. ‘‘It’s a cold, hard strategy.’’
Trump had been accused of racism for tweets on Monday urging ‘‘Progressive Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe’’ to ‘‘go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came’’.
One of his targets was Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, 29, known as AOC. She was born into a Puerto Rican family in the Bronx, New York. Her father was also born there. She hit back yesterday, saying that Trump’s remarks were ‘‘hallmark language of white supremacists. Trump feels comfortable leading the GOP into outright racism, and that should concern all Americans’’.
Trump was backed by Marc Short, a spokesman for Mike Pence, the vice-president, who said that Trump’s ‘‘intent’’ was not racist. ‘‘He’s making a point about great frustration that a lot of people feel that I think it’s hard to find anything Ilhan Omar has actually said since elected to Congress that’s been positive about the United States of America,’’ he said. – The Times
‘‘With his deliberate, racist outburst, @realdonaldtrump wants to raise the profile of his targets, drive Dems to defend them and make them emblematic of the entire party.’’ David Axelrod, former senior adviser to President Barack Obama,