GOP Massachusetts governor calls Trump tweets ‘shameful,’ ‘racist’

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) condemned a recent series of tweets by President Trump telling progressive congresswomen to “go back” to other countries, calling them “shameful” and “racist.”

Though a growing number of Republicans have criticized Trump’s statements, only a few have used the word “racist.”

“The president’s tweets were shameful, they were racist and … they bring a tremendous amount of, sort of, disgrace to public policy and public life and I condemn them all,” Baker said at an event Monday, according to WBUR.

{mosads}Trump’s tweets targeted four freshman representatives, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), all of whom are U.S. citizens and three of whom were born in the U.S. Pressley is the first black woman elected to represent Massachusetts in Congress.

Trump wrote that they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Baker, who enjoys some of the best approval ratings of any governor in the traditionally liberal state, has frequently criticized Trump and says he left his ballot blank in 2016 rather than vote for him.

After multiple denunciations of the tweets as racist by fellow Democrats and mixed responses from congressional Republicans, the four congresswomen gave a press conference Monday afternoon in which they fired back at Trump.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has announced the House will vote on a resolution condemning Trump’s tweets.

The resolution “strongly condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color by saying that our fellow Americans who are immigrants, and those who may look to the President like immigrants, should ‘go back’ to other countries.”