A Different Take on Trump’s Tweet Storm About ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen

A Different Take on Trump’s Tweet Storm About ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen

By William Sullivan

President Trump was raked over the coals by both the left and right for his tweet storm on Sunday, suggesting:

“Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful nation on earth, how our government is to be run.  Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.  Then come back and show us how it is done.  These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to work out free travel arrangements!

I’ve wracked my brain trying to find the racism that many are arguing is so obviously inherent in that series of tweets.  But it’s simply not there.  He never once mentions race or ethnicity.  And more to the point, it seems only too obvious that he is referring to ideas about governance.
But here’s something you may not have considered, given that everyone (and I mean everyone, as I’ve yet to see a pundit suggest anything to the contrary) seems to be assuming that the tweets are meant to call out Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley – or “the Squad,” as this quartet of freshman Congresswomen has been so stupidly dubbed by Maureen Dowd.
But why? If you still doubt me, try reading that sequence of tweets, above, again. 
Now, it couldn’t be clearer that Trump is referring to Ilhan Omar and her native country of Somalia, which is a nation exactly as he describes.  But he doesn’t say “four Congresswomen” or invoke any others among them at all.  In fact, the only reason one might think it’s specifically referencing those four women at all is Trump’s use of plural words -- “Congresswomen,” “countries,” “governments,” or the pronoun “they.”  
But there is evidence that this series of tweets was specifically about Ilhan Omar, and not meant to specifically invoke the others it’s assumed to reference.
First of all, let’s presume, as the media has, that Trump meant to include Ocasio-Cortez in his blanket statement about “Congresswomen who originally came from other countries.” 
Trump is well-known to voraciously imbibe cable news, and few who know anything about Ocasio-Cortez don’t know that she’s of Puerto Rican descent.  Did Trump just miss that in the copious hours of watching news reports about the most prominent upstart in the Democrat Party and the leftist media’s new favorite darling? 

President Trump in the Rose Garden Monday, defending his tweet storm

(YouTube screen grab)

Even in the unlikely event that he believed she was born in Puerto Rico, do you think he would be claiming that she “originally came from” another country when Puerto Rico is a United States commonwealth, which Trump would clearly know, given that he’s conducted business there?
So, at this point, to think what he said was racist, or that he was talking about Ocasio-Cortez, you are already making an improbable argument, because, again, he never mentions race or ethnicity in the tweets, and it seems unlikely that he’s talking about Ocasio-Cortez.
But it would make more sense that he’s talking explicitly about Ilhan Omar, and was just using plurals to a) avoid singling out Omar for criticism, thereby avoiding charges of a singular attack against a young, female, black Congresswoman, and b) to suggest that the problem he describes is broader than she, as a single example, represents.
After all, the rest should all make sense in every way.  Pelosi would certainly “arrange free travel arrangements” to get rid of her, as she’s been a thorn in her side all year.  Omar has been an open critic of Pelosi in 2019.  The House Speaker had appointed Omar to the Foreign Affairs Committee in January, only to have her openly make anti-Semitic statements in February that required much spin and deflection.  Pelosi still protected her, passing a resolution in response to her anti-Semitic statements which condemned hatred, but not her specific brand of it, and not condemning her by name.
What was Pelosi’s reward for that protection?  Omar condemned her for opposing the anti-Israel movement of “boycott, divest, sanctions” (BDS) back in March.  Then, when Ocasio-Cortez accused Pelosi of racism just last week, Omar doubled-down on the accusation, tweeting: “Patetico! You know they’re just salty about WHO is wielding the power to shift “public sentiment” these days, sis. Sorry not sorry.”
But the evidence that Trump was specifically referencing Omar doesn’t end there.  Just a day before Trump’s tweet storm, Omar began a foreign policy panel at the liberal Netroots Nations conference in Philadelphia by “making light of her anti-Semitic comments” earlier in the year, following up by saying, “I believe, as an immigrant, I probably love this country more than anyone who is naturally born and because I’m ashamed to continue living in its hypocrisy.”
She likely made these statements in response to Tucker Carlson’s comments in the preceding days (Omar had called Carlson “racist fool” before the Philadelphia event), with the Fox News pundit saying:

[T]here are signs that some people who move here from abroad don’t like this country at all.  As we told you last night, one of those people now serves in our Congress.
Think about that for a minute.  Our country rescued Ilhan Omar from the single poorest place on Earth.  We didn’t do it for the money, we did it because we are kind people.  How did she respond to the remarkable gift we gave her?
She scolded us, called us names, showered us with contempt.  It’s infuriating.  More than that, it is also ominous.  The United States admits more immigrants than any other country on Earth, more than a million every year… Americans like immigrants.  But immigrants have to like us back.

When Carlson says “us,” he is talking about Americans, and our inherent national devotion to free markets, individual liberty, and limited government -- the very principles which have made us great.
Trump’s tirade could very well have been an addendum to Carlson’s tirade against Ilhan Omar, and specifically in response to her comments from the day before. 
Yes, Trump used the opportunity to troll Pelosi, and forced her to rush to the defense of the same the group of people that had, just days before, denounced her as a racist, and who have been (and will continue to be) campaigning for her ouster.
That’s all hilarious, sure.  But the question is, will Americans miss the larger point Trump made in the noise created about the tirade being about “the Squad,” or being racist somehow?
I don’t think so, because such expressions as Trump’s aren’t uncommon in discussions among Americans today, as anyone outside of a leftist media bubble or a college outrage mob would know.  What is being discussed among Americans are ideas, and we Americans still like the American ideas of free markets, individual liberty, and limited government.
As a good friend of mine from Texas wrote to me on Monday:

As far as Omar goes, Trump is 100% right.  You had to flee point A to go to point B because obviously B is better.  Then you complain about B and actively work to make B different from what made it better than A in the first place.  If you want to change something so bad, then change A.  Race doesn’t have anything to do with that.

This is the crux of Trump’s tweets.  Race, in an objective view of this discussion, is nothing more than a red herring, and any suggestion that those tweets are racist is just smoke to hide the underlying truth -- the Left wants to destroy and fundamentally transform America, and is working to normalize the notion that it’s somehow noble of us to import enough people who can allow them to do so.
But the Left must be relying upon that smoke for 2020.  Consider that, in swing states, Ilhan Omar boasts a 9% approval rating, according to a recent poll.  A national platform of a prominent Democrat being “ashamed” of living in our national “hypocrisy” may not play as well in those states as Trump’s believing that America is “the greatest nation” on the planet, or that the principles which have long guided our country should be preserved.