The US House of Representatives will vote on a resolution “condemning” Donald Trump’s “xenophobic tweets”, after the president lashed out at minority politicians in a racist Twitter rant telling them to “go back” to where they came from.
The president's tweets were directed at women like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, all of whom were born in the United States. A fourth, Ilhan Omar, was born in Somalia, but became a US citizen at the age of 17.
In a letter sent to her Democratic colleagues, House speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her caucus to vote in favour of the resolution, and said Mr Trump’s statements were ”beyond his own low standards using disgraceful language about Members of Congress”.
Mr Trump, soon after the news broke that the House would hold such a vote, spoke about the incident at the White House, and doubled down on his position.
“If somebody has a problem with our country, if somebody doesn’t want to be in our country, they should leave,” Mr Trump told a gaggle of reporters. The president has also said that he does not believe his statements were racist.
But, the comments have raised fury in Washington, and has become a potentially unifying force for Democrats who had in recent days been enduring a major rift between the progressives Mr Trump targeted and the more centrist politicians like Ms Pelosi.
As those Democrats decried Mr Trump's remarks as racist, Republicans remained silent on the issue, keeping in line with previous behaviour from the party when the bombastic president has found himself on the receiving end of criticism for racist and hateful remarks.
