Kasich calls on Republicans to condemn ‘deplorable’ Trump tweets

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) on Monday called on his fellow Republicans to condemn a series of tweets from President Trump in which he told a group of Democratic congresswomen that they should “go back” to the countries they came from.

“What @realDonaldTrump said about Democrat women in Congress is deplorable and beneath the dignity of the office,” Kasich, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, tweeted.

“We all, including Republicans, need to speak out against these kinds of comments that do nothing more than divide us and create deep animosity — maybe even hatred,” he added.

“At the base of America is a Jewish and Christian tradition that says that we must realize that we are all brothers and sisters,” he tweeted in a subsequent post. “Rhetoric like the President’s works against that foundation of our country and all that we teach our children.”

At the base of America is a Jewish and Christian tradition that says that we must realize that we are all brothers and sisters. Rhetoric like the President’s works against that foundation of our country and all that we teach our children.

— John Kasich (@JohnKasich) July 15, 2019

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

{mosads}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 in another country.

While Democrats have widely condemned the attacks on the first-year lawmakers as racist, the majority of Republicans have remained silent.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) defended Trump’s tweets Monday morning, arguing the comments are “obviously not racist.”

“Well, ask the president what he meant by it, but clearly it’s not a racist comment. He could have meant go back to the district they came from, to the neighborhood they came from,” Harris told a Baltimore radio station, despite Trump specifying “countries” in his tweets.