President Donald Trump thanked several “progressive” Democratic congresswomen who he called out in a series of Twitter posts after a latest Rasmussen poll showed a four-point jump in his approval ratings.
“New Poll: The Rasmussen Poll, one of the most accurate in predicting the 2016 Election, has just announced that ‘Trump’ numbers have recently gone up by four points, to 50%,” Trump wrote in a Twitter post on July 17. “Thank you to the vicious young Socialist Congresswomen. America will never buy your act!”
His most notable post was one where he called on “‘progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen” to “go back” to their countries to help fix the “totally broken and crime-infested places” before returning to the United States to “show us how it is done.” Apart from Omar, who was born in Somalia, the other three lawmakers were born in the United States.
Many of Trump’s opponents denounced the comments, calling them racist. The four congresswomen also held a press conference on July 15 to publicly fight back against the president.
The Democrat-controlled House even passed a resolution to condemn the president’s remarks on July 16 largely on party lines.
“I think it’s terrible when people speak so badly about our country, when people speak so horribly. I have a list of things here—I’m not going to bore you with it because you would be bored. You wouldn’t write it anyway,” he said.
He continued: “But I have a list of things here said by the congresswomen that [are] so bad, so horrible that I almost don’t want to read it, it’s so bad. I think what you [should] do is: You have the same list that I do. You should repeat some of that. When the Democrats didn’t want to mention the name of the congresswoman, not so long ago, and what they did and the way they’re treating Israel is a disgrace.”
“But not only Israel, it’s what they say about our country. It’s my opinion they hate our country. And that’s not good. It’s not acceptable,” he added.
The president also denied that his posts were racist, saying “Those Tweets were NOT Racist. I don’t have a Racist bone in my body,” while referring to the House resolution to condemn his comments.