July 16, 2019

Trump Insists His Racist Tweets Were “NOT Racist”

“I don’t have a racist bone in my body!”

Evan Vucci/AP

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President Donald Trump on Tuesday once again defended his racist weekend tweets targeting four Congresswomen of color, this time insisting that he doesn’t “have a Racist bone” and accusing the lawmakers of “hat[ing] our Country.”

Trump’s bigoted outbursts over the past few days have been aimed at the so-called “Squad”—a group of four newly elected Democratic members of Congress that includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.); the latter two are the first Muslim women ever to serve in Congress. On Sunday, Trump tweeted that the lawmakers should “go back” to the countries they came from, despite the fact that all four are US citizens and all but Omar were born in the United States.

In his Tuesday tweets, Trump cited a poll that, he claimed, showed AOC with just a 21-percent favorability rating and Omar with an 8-percent rating. Trump didn’t specify which poll he was referring to, but the numbers are similar (though not identical) to figures that appeared in a widely criticized Axios story over the weekend that reported partial results from an unnamed survey of white people without college degrees. In other words, Trump apparently pointed to a poll of white people to argue that his attacks on four Congresswomen of color were not racist.

In response to Trump’s latest tweets, AOC hit back on Twitter. “You’re right, Mr. President – you don’t have a racist bone in your body,” she wrote. “You have a racist mind in your head, and a racist heart in your chest.”

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