“The President won this one,” a House Democratic lawmaker told the news outlet’s chief Washington correspondent. “What the President has done is politically brilliant. Pelosi was trying to marginalize these folks, and the President has now identified the entire party with them.”
President Trump has credited the four with helping him achieve a four-point bump in the polls, after he lambasted them for bad-mouthing America, saying that they “hate our country.”
On July 17, Trump wrote on Twitter, “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%. Thank you to the vicious young Socialist Congresswomen. America will never buy your act!”
Trump’s criticisms of the squad were labeled as “racist” by many of his political opponents—namely one comment he made on July 14.
In the tweet, he suggested that the congresswomen should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.”
Apart from Omar, who was born in Somalia, the other three lawmakers were born in the United States.
Omar said in February in response to statements from critics. “This is why I unequivocally apologize.”
Trump went through a laundry list of things Omar has said during a July 17 rally in North Carolina, prompting the crowd to start spontaneously chanting “send her back.”
Among his criticisms, Trump said Omar had blamed the United States for the terrorist attacks on the United States; smeared U.S. service members involved in Black Hawk Down; minimized the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on our homeland to “some people did something”; pleaded for compassion for recruits of the ISIS terrorist group; refused to answer whether she supported Al Qaeda during a press conference; and blamed the United States for the crisis in Venezuela.
