The NPR Politics Podcast - President Trump Defends His Racist Tweets Attacking Democratic Congresswomen

Episode Date: July 16, 2019

A day after a series of tweets using racist language to describe Democratic congresswomen, President Trump said the four members of Congress should apologize to him. The targeted women responded at their own press conference. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and Congressional reporter Kelsey Snell. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is the Colella family at the Santa Monica Pier after just completing our epic Route 66 trip all the way from Chicago to LA. This podcast was recorded at 6.17pm on Monday, July 15th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Thanks for keeping us company along the road. Now here's the show. That's awesome. Very cool. I've actually always wanted to take that road trip. Yeah, I mean, it's like an iconic drive, right? Yeah. Very cool. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover politics.

I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. All right, well, we are going to make a hard detour, hard left turn away from Route 66 and on to President Trump, because today he defended a series of racist tweets that he made to describe four Democratic Congresswomen. If you're not happy here, then you can leave. As far as I'm concerned, if you hate our country, if you're not happy here, you can leave.

And that's what I say all the time. That's what I said in a tweet, which I guess some people think is controversial. A lot of people love it, by the way. A lot of people love it. Later, those women responded. Here's one of them, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I am not surprised at what he's doing. But I also know that we're focused on making it better because we don't

leave the things that we love. And when we love this country, what that means is that we propose the solutions to fix it. All right. Well, let's dig into how we actually got here. And let's go back to the original tweets that started off this entire controversy. Ayesha, why don't you start off by just explaining what he actually said? So Trump called out these progressive Democrat congresswomen and he said this, quote, why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came? So to be clear, all four of these Congresswomen are U.S. citizens. Three of them were born in the United States. The only one who wasn't is Ilhan Omar, who was a refugee. And so this obviously set off a firestorm because he is essentially directing this at four women of

color. And that is in the history of this country is a very common thing that people are told who are not white. They are told, go back where you came from, regardless of whether you're someone who maybe had slaves as your ancestors and you don't know exactly where in Africa you're from, but they'll still tell you, go back there. So that is what this was. That's what this harkened back to. And let's talk about who he's actually referring to, because he did not list them by name necessarily in that original tweet. Right. So who he's talking about is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congresswoman from New York, Ayanna Pressley, the congresswoman from Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib from Michigan, and Ilhan Omar from Minnesota. And to be clear, all of them, as we've already said, are U.S. citizens. Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia, but she is a refugee.

And the rest of them were all born in the United States. Yeah, like Rashida Tlaib was born in Detroit and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born in New York. And I believe Ayanna Pressley was born in Ohio. Yes. Yeah. So, yes, these are all U.S. citizens. They are members of Congress. They are they are here representing here in Washington, representing people. They were elected to their jobs. And it's been seen by a lot of people as just a bridge much further? And Aisha, maybe you can explain this to me, because I will say when I initially saw the tweets, I do think they have a little bit of shock value. But at the same token, I mean, I feel like the president, what he says is specifically around racial issues nowadays, they tend to sort of lose their shock value to me, because we've seen incidents like this before. I will say when I saw them, they stood out to me as different from what President Trump normally does. He he does walk this line when it comes to race. At times he has crossed it. He called out these four women who are not white, who are women of color. And he said, go back to where you came from like there there's a direct line and he this is not something that he says to nancy pelosi the speaker of the house this is not something he says to chuck schumer he's basically saying because you come from a place that i say is messed up whether it's and

i mean basically referring to their families whether whether it's Puerto Rico or Somalia. You don't get to tell us Americans. And there was a division there. You're telling the people of the United States. So it's a division. You're not one of us. You don't get to tell us what we get to do. You need to go back there.

I get what you're saying, Aisha. But at the same time, I'm just reminded that this is the man whose kind of political prominence came to be because he started the birtherism stories around President Obama. I will say that one of the things that I've noticed in the reactions from members of Congress, particularly Republicans, is they seem to be responding to the fact that this is an attack on another member of Congress and that it is not related to policy of any kind that he distinguishes here. He's not connecting them to socialism or to immigration or to some other place or part of the policy agenda for Republicans. It is just a straight out attack on these members of Congress. And it was just out of nowhere on a Sunday morning. And I think that for a lot of them seems to have crossed a line where they couldn't avoid talking about it. It is rare that we hear Republicans push back on this president. They are quite afraid of what he may do to them on Twitter, that he might go after them or that his voters might do to them. But there was something about this that changed for them. And these four congresswomen, they did respond. They held a press conference just this afternoon to essentially condemn what the president had to say. This is a president who has openly violated the very value our country aspires to uphold. Equality under the law, religious liberty, equal protection, and protection from persecution. And to distract from that, he's launching a blatantly racist attack on four duly elected members of the United States House of Representatives, all of whom are women of color.

This is the agenda of white nationalists, whether it is happening in chat rooms or it's happening on national TV. And now it's reached the White House garden. That was Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. And, you know, the tweets that the president put out were embraced by some white nationalists. And Trump addressed that when he was asked about that. It doesn't concern you that many people saw that tweet as racist and that white nationalist groups are finding common cause with you on that point. It doesn't concern me because many people agree with me. And all I'm saying, they want to leave, they can leave.

Now, it doesn't say leave forever. It says leave if you want. But what it says. Yeah, I think that that response is going to follow Trump, that response to being asked, white nationalists embrace this. And then he goes, well, it doesn't bother me. A lot of people agree with me, I guess, including the white nationalists. So he had a moment to push back on that. And he didn't. I mean, how much does this remind you, though, of when he was asked about his reaction to Charlottesville, when he said there are good people on both sides? I think that is going to be heard by a lot of people as being the exact same type of thing. Trump has denied that he's a racist and his supporters and the White

House pushed back against that forcefully. So what are Republicans saying about this, Kelsey? They more or less weren't saying anything all day on Sunday. People started to speak up a little bit on Monday, and it started with a few more moderate members saying that what the president said was not acceptable. And then you reached a point where you had a couple of people like Congressman Will Hurd of Texas, who said that the comments were racist. And people like Lindsey Graham, who have always defended the president, some of them were still defending the president. And Kelsey, we've seen a lot of response strongly condemning this from Democrats, not just in the House, but Democrats altogether. Yeah, I mean, this is one of the situations where Democrats are coming out and saying,

this is the president we told you we were worried about. This is the person that we asked you to come out and vote against in 2018 when we were voting for the House. Come and vote for Democrats so we can push back against this specific version of the president. Now, it does come with some risks here because as we depart, we didn't hear there from Congresswoman Omar, she went on to say it's time to impeach the president. And it's already bringing up a very uncomfortable conversation for Democrats about what do they do with a president who speaks this way. And that's all going to play out in a presidential election year, which we will talk more about after we take a quick break. safe and private online environments at your convenience. Get help at your own time and your

own pace. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist. Visit betterhelp.com slash politics to learn more and get 10% off your first month. If your child plays video games for hours on end, perhaps you consider that antisocial. But these days, walling yourself off from the real world could be the center of your social life. Today's games offer more avatars And we're back. And we were just talking about how Democrats have kind of banded together to really support and defend these four Congresswomen who were insulted by the president. But, you know, Kelsey, just a couple of days before, there have been ongoing tensions, you would say, between Nancy Pelosi and some of these freshman Congresswomen.

So, Kelsey, can you kind of just explain what that tension was actually about? Yeah, this all came on the heels of a vote about a border bill where the progressives essentially were accusing moderates of being racist. And it was a giant fight there where Pelosi was kind of stepping in the middle of moderates versus progressives about who was right about border security, border money, and what role race plays in that conversation. It is an uncomfortable place for Democrats. And this is what they were facing before President Trump decided to intervene. And I'm curious because I was at Netroots over the weekend,

and this is something I heard so much about, in part because some of these congresswomen were there, but there were these purists who felt like, you know, that what Nancy Pelosi had done was really wrong and really divisive for the party as a whole. And I'm curious if what Donald Trump has done now has kind of brought an end to this civil war. To me, it seems like with this, the Democrats did come together to defend these four congresswomen. And they certainly agree that they don't. They agree with how they feel about President Trump and they don't like what he says. But isn't the problem that they can't agree on what to do about that? And that still remains? That's absolutely right. And I don't think this solves this problem at all. If anything,

it gives Democrats a breather from the fact that reporters were paying attention to their infighting for the past week and they get a chance to step away from that and maybe try to take their family infighting behind closed doors. But it really doesn't solve their broader problems. And I think that was actually evidenced in the press conference when Ayanna Pressley brought up the concept of four votes. Please know that we are more than four people. We ran on a mandate to advocate for and to represent those ignored, left out, and left behind. Our squad is big. So this group of four women is sometimes known as the squad. That's because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted a picture of the four of them together. Actually, she put it up on her Instagram way back in November of 2018, calling this her new squad. They all hang out together. They live near each other. They are, you know, they're allies in politics and they are friends.

Our squad includes any person committed to building a more equitable and just world. And that is the work that we want to get back to. And it is a dig at Nancy Pelosi. And she's trying to make the point that, you know, that there is this community out there supporting them. So, you know, this entire debate comes in the middle of a summer that has been largely defined by the Trump administration's hardline immigration policies. And those policies, you know, coupled with his tweets and his rhetoric, have kind of come to dominate the political conversation as the 2020 election cycle has been picking up. So let's talk about what this means for both parties. First, let's talk about the Democrats. Well, Democrats wanted this to be

an election again about health care. Health care is the issue that they think helped them win the House in 2018 and the space where they think they have won the messaging, where they think Democrats, Republicans and independents are with them on their goals for health care. So they wanted to talk about that going into 2020. Republicans want to talk about immigration. They want to talk about immigration because they think there are a lot of people in the country who are uncomfortable with the flow of immigrants, and they see open borders as a problem. Now, Democrats are happy to fight on that plane with them, but they don't necessarily view it as the most comfortable political space for them. So this isn't really where they want to be.

No, they want to be talking about issues where they can define themselves in a positive way, not in a defensive way. And this is something that President Trump, he has always argued that he feels like the arguments over immigration work in his favor. And that's what he was trying to do before the midterms, talking about the caravans and all of that. So it is debatable if that is a successful tactic. Well, that is the thing. There are questions of whether that worked. It obviously did not work in the House for President Trump. But President Trump has stuck with this idea that he believes arguing about immigration and saying that Democrats are open border, that that is a winning strategy for him. And I guess he's going to try it out in the general election. And we should say talking about immigration definitely works for the president's base. It's important to remember that winning a House race is speaking to a select group of voters in a smaller regional space and a tighter ideological bubble than trying to win a presidential election, which is about winning entire states.

Yes. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. We'll be back as soon as there is more political news that you need to know about. And if you did not notice, this is our second podcast of today. In your feeds, you will also find our latest 2020 candidate interview. It's with Senator Amy Klobuchar. We join her on the trail to ask about who she would pick to sit on the Supreme Court, whether or not her administration would pursue charges against President Trump,

and why she's seen as the funniest candidate in the crowded field. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover politics. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.