LA Times editorial board labels Trump ‘Bigot-in-Chief’

The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board on Monday labeled President Trump the “Bigot-in-Chief” after he told a group of Democratic congresswomen that they should “go back” to the countries they came from.

“President Trump’s Twitter feed is a repugnant place, and no one would want the thankless task of having to weed through all his bitter, bigoted ramblings to determine which are the most offensive,” the editorial board wrote.

{mosads}”But a three-tweet thread early Sunday morning — in which he wrote that the four progressive House Democrats who call themselves ‘The Squad’ should ‘go back’ to the ‘crime-infested places from which they came’ — certainly has to rank among the most disgusting.”

Trump in a set of tweets Sunday appeared to target an unnamed group of progressive congresswomen “who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe.”

In the tweets, which seemed to be directed at Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), the president suggested they “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

All four of the freshman congresswomen are U.S. citizens, and only Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia, was born outside the U.S.

“Three out of the four … can’t ‘go back’ to the countries he has in mind because they are, in fact, from here,” the Times wrote. “They were born in the United States, just like Trump himself, making them every bit as American as he is. Only the fourth, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, was born elsewhere; she emigrated from Somalia. And as a naturalized citizen of the United States, she too is as American as he is.”

“He is simply spewing as usual, and in the process fanning the flames of disunity, chaos, prejudice and polarization — all cleverly hidden behind a veneer of rote and thuggish patriotism. He is playing to the lowest, most degraded emotions of his supporters while reveling in the fury of his opponents. This is the definition of demagoguery.”

The editorial board said the tweets were reminiscent of Trump pushing the false conspiracy theory that former President Obama was born outside of the country.

“We shouldn’t rise to his bait, but how can we not? If we ignore him, we normalize his reckless behavior, and that’s even worse,” the board concluded.