For more than 24 hours after Trump issued his racist tweet telling four freshman black and brown congresswomen to go back to where they came from (three were born in the U.S. and the fourth became a citizen at the age of 17), Republicans were silent. Once they did begin to speak, it was to support Trump, decide that they are arbiters of what racism looks and sounds like (although racism is an experience they’ve never had and never will), and dismiss the outcry as “overblown.”
https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1152663264179834880
That last patronizing statement came from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has continued to refuse to address Trump’s racism and to blame Democrats for the outrage. He somehow missed world leaders and even some Republican voters for calling out the tweet, as well.
On Saturday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) shared a video from Erica Thomas, a black female Georgia lawmaker who is nine months pregnant and whose husband is currently serving on active duty in the military, who was told to “go back to where you came from” at a grocery store. Lieu offered to speak with McConnell about the racism that undergirds such a statement and how Trump is fueling it.
It’s doubtful that any Republican lawmaker, regardless of whether they actually know that what Trump said is racist, will ever admit it in public. After all, their base is full of people who think that what Trump said is totally fine and that black Americans consistently lie about their experiences. In fact, they don’t believe that assumption is racist at all.
Twitter was full of support for both Thomas and for Lieu. Read some of their comments below:
Featured image via Flickr by Luke Harold under a Creative Commons license
