Trump’s attacks on four Democrat politicians slammed for racism

US President Donald Trump directed a clearly racist tweet at rival politicians on Sunday, provoking disgust and angry responses from the women he targeted.

Trump said the four female Democratic representatives, who are all people of colour and US citizens, should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”.

The four freshman congresswomen –– whose names were not mentioned in Trump’s tweets –– are Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley.

Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx, New York, while Rashida Tlaib was born in Michigan. 

African-American Ayanna Pressley was born in Ohio and only Ilhan Omar is an immigrant, who became a citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old

The quartet sit on the progressive end of the Democrat party and have been fierce opponents of the Trump administration.

The four women visited detention camps in the south of the US last week and slammed the treatment of asylum seekers inside.

Responding to the Trump tweet, Ocasio-Cortez wrote that the country she “come(s) from” and swears to is the US, and that Trump is right in calling it a corrupt country now that he is in power and has ruined the immigration system.

She further suggested that the source of Trump’s anger is the fact that voters have chosen women of colour to represent their concerns, in a nod to diversity and equality.

Ayanna Pressley, the Massachusetts congresswoman who was attacked by Trump alongside Ocasio-Cortez also tweeted her protest, calling Trump a “racist” and holding her ground, saying “we’re not going anywhere”.

Ilhan Omar called Trump “the worst, most corrupt and inept” president that the US has ever seen and in her response on Twitter included a quote from Bobby Kennedy, in which he says: “America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.”

Omar said she only had an allegiance to the US and that Trump is “stoking white nationalism (because)  you are angry that people like us are serving in Congress and fighting against your hate-filled agenda”.

Rashida Tlaib has also responded strongly to Trump’s racist attack on herself and her colleagues, calling him a “failure” and asking for his impeachment.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who has in the past had strong disagreements with the four women, known as ‘the Squad’ in Washington circles, has stood by them, pointing out Trump’s purported hypocrisy in a tweet.

She said that the US president’s plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ “has always been about making America white again”.

Conservatives also expressed anger at Trump’s tweets.

Republican strategist and political commentator Ana Navarro-Cardenas, who describes herself as a  “proud Nicaraguan-American, loving my hyphenated life” was also critical of Trump. 

In a scathing tweet, she pointed out that Trump’s wives were also immigrants to the US, albeit white. She also said that the Democrats Trump was targeting “pay taxes”, unlike the Republican leader, who has yet to present his past tax returns for public scrutiny.