Washington: The US House of Representatives formally condemned Donald Trump on Tuesday for xenophobic attacks on four minority Democratic lawmakers and hostile language targeting immigrants, as the president denied accusations of racism.
Top Republican leaders rallied around Trump, but four members of the president’s party voted with the 235 Democrats to condemn him for “racist comments that have legitimised and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of colour.”
One independent lawmaker also supported the measure, which takes aim at Trump’s weekend tweets telling a group of progressive Democratic congresswomen of colour to “go back” to other countries.
The resolution also takes the president to task for “referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as ‘invaders.’”
Trump has a long history of pandering to white suspicions about other ethnic groups, and the resolution criticises him for “saying that Members of Congress who are immigrants (or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants) do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America.”
Democrats hold a majority in the 435-member House but are outnumbered by Republicans in the Senate, where the resolution is unlikely to be considered.
The four congresswomen — all but one of whom were born in the US — are of Hispanic, Arab, Somali and African-American descent.
Trump has stuck by the provocative comments.
“Our Country is Free, Beautiful and Very Successful. If you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!” the president tweeted on Tuesday.
Democratic leaders denounced Trump’s remarks, and rallied around the lawmakers — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley.
Omar is the only one born outside the United States.
Slamming the “so-called vote” as a “Democrat con game,” Trump urged Republicans not to “show ‘weakness’ and fall into their trap.”
“Those Tweets were NOT Racist. I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!” Trump said. Trump’s repeated attacks appear to be aimed at galvanising his mostly white electoral base ahead of the 2020 presidential vote.
They would seem to have borne fruit, with his approval rating among Republicans rising five percentage points to 72 per cent, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on Monday and Tuesday. — AFP
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
