Progressive Lawmakers’ Answer to Trump’s Racism: Impeachment
President Trump has spent the past two days hurling racist attacks against a group of congresswomen of color who have criticized his immigration policy. He’s suggested they go back to the countries “from which they came,” and accused them of hating the United States “with a passion.” He punctuated nearly 36 hours of racist tweets with a racist press conference on the White House, where he continued to suggest the four Democratically elected U.S. lawmakers were somehow un-American.
On Monday afternoon, the lawmakers had an answer for Trump: Go get impeached.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) held their own news conference Monday to declare the president unfit for the office and call on Congress to relieve him of it.
“I have not made impeachment central to my election or my tenure,” said Omar. “But since the day that I was elected, I’ve said to people it is not if he will be impeached, but when. It is time for us to stop allowing this president to make a mockery out of our Constitution. It is time for us to impeach this president.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar: "It is time for us to impeach this President" https://t.co/TpwfY4EqwK pic.twitter.com/lt4rbqbcWD
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 15, 2019
Tlaib — who famously yelled, “We’re going to impeach this motherfucker” the night she was sworn into Congress — agreed. She said that if she is to fight against the corruption in the government as those who elected her last November intended, it “means supporting an impeachment inquiry of this president and his actions,” adding that “many members of Congress have called for his impeachment because of his utter disregard and disrespect of the United States Constitution.”
“I urge House leadership, many of my colleagues, to impeach this lawless president today,” she concluded.
BREAKING: Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) calls President Trump “lawless,” says we know “this is who he is” and she “urges House leadership and many of her colleagues to impeach.” #MTPDaily pic.twitter.com/W5PXV0lfXK
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) July 15, 2019
Though Reps. Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley have both called for Trump’s impeachment, they did not do so explicitly on Monday, instead maintaining that they will remain resolute in the face of the president’s attacks. “Despite the occupant of the White House’s attempts to marginalize us and to silence us, please know that we are more than four people,” Pressley said. “We ran on a mandate to advocate for and to represent those ignored, left out, and left behind. Our squad is big.”
Ocasio-Cortez told an emotional story about how when she was a girl her father took her to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, pointed her toward the Capitol, and told her that “all of this belongs to us.”
“The first note I want to tell children across this country,” she continued, “is that no matter what this president says, this country belongs to you and it belongs to everyone. Today that very notion was challenged. This weekend that very notion was challenged.”
Rep. @AOC (D-NY): "I want to tell children across this country…that no matter what the president says, this country belongs to you, and it belongs to everyone, and today, that notion — that very notion — was challenged." https://t.co/7FfSzCLKfr pic.twitter.com/86gjbacWQX
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) July 15, 2019
“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,” she added.
Around the same time the congresswomen were speaking, Trump unleashed another string of tweets attacking them, asserting again they “HATE our Country” and that “IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY HERE, YOU CAN LEAVE!”
He capped off the tirade with a familiar refrain: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
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Ryan Bort, Khareem Sudlow
