'Not a racist bone in my body,' says Donald Trump

WASHINGTON: Maintaining “I don’t have a Racist bone in my body,” US President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated his argument that people who hated the United States and were not happy in should leave the country.
Amid a raging political and social firestorm across the country over his racist tweets, first directed at four non-white Democratic lawmakers, Trump expanded his critique to all Americans, conflating disapproval of an administration’s policies or inadequacies to hatred for the country.
“Our Country is Free, Beautiful and Very Successful. If you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!” the US President said in one of several tweets on the subject.
“Those tweets were NOT racist. I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!” Trump insisted, referring to his first tweets on the subject last week in which he asked the four Congresswomen critical of the Trump administration's immigration policies, to go back to where they came from and fix the problems there. Three of the four lawmakers are US-born, albeit of immigrant stock, just like Trump.
Trump also called the “so-called vote” to be taken in the US House of Representative to condemn his racist tweets is a “Democrat con game” and advised Republicans, most of whom have silently acquiesced to his race-baiting, politically-loaded tweets for fear of losing elections in their white-dominated Trump-supporting constituencies, not to “show ‘weakness’ and fall into their trap.”
“This should be a vote on the filthy language, statements and lies told by the Democrat Congresswomen, who I truly believe, based on their actions, hate our Country. Get a list of the HORRIBLE things they have said,” Trump said, adding in an earlier tweet that “The Democrat Congresswomen have been spewing some of the most vile, hateful, and disgusting things ever said by a politician in the House or Senate… shouting of the F-word, among many other terrible things.”
The US President appeared to be referring to a remark made at a gathering of her supporters by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib saying “impeach the m**********r.” But Trump’s protestations were brutally called out on social media by critics who pointed out that he was far from saintly in his use of language considering his own frequent use of expletives, including copulatory verbs, some of it caught on tape.
“I’ll admit it. I did try and f**k her. She was married,” Trump was recorded saying in an Access Hollywood tape that surfaced during the 2016 Presidential election campaign. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab ’em by the p***y. You can do anything.”
Trump later acknowledged he had made the remarks but dismissed it as “locker room banter.”
Trump was also taunted by the four Democratic lawmakers he had attacked, as they held a news conference to explain that criticizing the administration’s policies was not tantamount to hating America, a country they loved.
“You’re right, Mr President — you don’t have a racist bone in your body,” New York lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a snippy tweet: “You have a racist mind in your head and a racist heart in your chest. That’s why you violate the rights of children and tell the Congresswoman who represents your home borough, to ‘go back to my country.’” Ocasio-Cortez is a New Yorker of Puerto-Rico (a US territory) heritage.
Although Trump tried initially to drive a Democratic rift wider by pitting the four insurgent lawmakers, dubbed the “Squad,” against House Speaker and party leader Nancy Pelosi, who is seen as an establishment figure, Democrats closed ranks on Tuesday ahead of the House vote. The vote will reveal to a large extent how many Republicans have the nerve to go against Trump and call him out for racism, even as liberal commentators, notably Nobel laureate and NYT columnist Paul Krugman bluntly called him a “white supremacist.”
Trump’s attack on Democratic lawmakers who he perceives as being un-American foreigners also resulted in a backlash on social media from critics and trolls who invoked the “foreignness” of his third wife, the current First Lady Melania Trump, who is of Slovenian heritage.
“Hello ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement), where do I go to report an immigrant who was working here illegally before obtaining a fraudulent visa, had an anchor baby, brought her family through chain migration, and who’s currently living in government-funded housing and receiving free government healthcare?” read one meme on Twitter.
A cartoon showed an ICE helicopter hovering over the White House during Sunday’s immigration round-up with an agent bellowing over a megaphone: “Melania Knauss, About your 1996 Green Card violation and illegal employment….” and another showed a thought bubble atop Melania Trump’s head wondering “Who is he asking to go back to their country?”