President Trump on Monday tweeted out a lengthy attack from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in which the senator accused Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats of being “anti-America.”
Trump shared Graham’s diatribe against Democrats as he doubled down on his attacks against progressive congresswomen in which he said they should “go back” to other countries instead of criticizing the U.S. government.
“We all know that AOC [Ocasio-Cortez] and this crowd are a bunch of communists, they hate Israel, they hate our own country, they’re calling the guards along our border, the border patrol agents, concentration camp guards,” Graham said on “Fox & Friends.”{mosads}
“They are anti-Semitic, they are anti-America, aim higher. We don’t need to know anything about them personally, talk about their policies,” Graham continued. “I think they are American citizens who are duly elected that are running on an agenda that is disgusting, that the American people will reject.”
The senator suggested to Trump that if progressive lawmakers become the face of the Democratic Party, “you will destroy the Democratic Party.”
Trump left out a part of the quote in which Graham encouraged the president to “aim higher.” The thread of tweets also did not include the portion of Graham’s appearance in which the senator urged Trump to “take on their policies” rather than focus on personal attacks.
The president sparked uproar on Sunday morning when he tweeted that unnamed progressive congresswomen “who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Trump did not specify which lawmakers he was referring to, but the comments were widely interpreted as targeting Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). All four are U.S. citizens, and only Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia, was born outside the U.S.
All four have been outspoken critics of the Trump administration, and Omar and Tlaib in particular have questioned the U.S.-Israel relationship, prompting pushback from Republicans.
Ocasio-Cortez called Trump’s remarks “hallmark language of white supremacists.”
“It’s important to note that the President’s words yday, telling four American Congresswomen of color ‘go back to your own country,’ is hallmark language of white supremacists,” the first-term lawmaker tweeted Monday morning. “Trump feels comfortable leading the GOP into outright racism, and that should concern all Americans.”