BALTIMORE _ Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has criticized President Donald Trump's tweets and comments that certain members of Congress should "go back" to other countries.
"I thought the comments were terrible and very unbecoming of a president," Hogan, a Republican, told WJZ-TV Tuesday night. "Totally inappropriate."
Hogan's statement, while critical of the president, stopped short of calling the president's tweets racist, as they've broadly been described.
Asked if the governor believes the president's tweets were racist, a spokeswoman for Hogan said the governor had nothing to add.
Hogan's office blasted out the quote on Wednesday morning as the governor headed to the annual J. Millard Tawes Crab and Clam Bake in Crisfield on the Eastern Shore.
Trump's initial tweets on Sunday targeted for Democratic congresswomen of color, saying they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."
Three of the four targeted congresswomen _ U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan _ were born in the United States. U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was born in Somalia and her family fled to the U.S. when she was a child.
Maryland's only Republican in Congress, U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, defended Trump's comments as not racist.
"He could've meant 'go back to the district they came from' (or) to 'the neighborhood they came from,'" Harris said in an interview on WBAL Radio.
But a few hours later, Trump clarified that he did, in fact, mean they should leave the country.
"If you're not happy in the U.S., if you're complaining all the time, very simply, you can leave," Trump said.
Trump also later tweeted that his comments were not racist. "I don't have a Racist bone in my body!" the president tweeted on Tuesday.
Democrats, meanwhile, have been quick to blast Trump's comments.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted largely along party lines Tuesday night to condemn Trump's tweets. The resolution "strongly condemns President Donald Trump's racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color."
All seven of Maryland's Democratic representatives voted for the resolution: U.S. Reps. David Trone, Jamie Raskin, Elijah Cummings, John Sarbanes, C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, Anthony Brown and Steny Hoyer.
Raskin, a co-author of the resolution, said on the floor: "To tell naturalized American citizens to go back to the countries they came from is nativist and antithetical to everything America stands for."
Harris voted against the resolution.
