Donald Trump Loosens His Tongue Again

US President Donald Trump (right) loosened his tongue to go on another verbal rampage and methinks, he is enjoying it. 

This time, he directed his attack on four congresswomen who have been his outspoken critics. Colloquially known as “the squad”, they are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) and Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts). 

Two Sundays ago, Trump set off a firestorm when he tweeted that the Democratic freshmen “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe”. 

He told them to “go back” to their home countries, and to “the totally broken and crime-infested place from which they came”. 

This is in spite of the fact the congresswomen are all US citizens and all but one were born in the US. (Ilhan came to the US as a child after fleeing Somalia with her family in 1995 and became a citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old). 

Last Wednesday, Trump attacked them again. He went through a laundry list of what he deemed offensive comments purportedly made by each woman, mangling and misconstruing many facts along the way. 

And he told his fan base in Greenville, North Carolina: “They never have anything good to say. That’s why I say, ‘Hey if you don’t like it, let ‘em leave, let ‘em leave’”. 

Eager to rile up the crowd of supporters with the same kind of rhetoric he targeted at women and minorities in 2016, Trump went on to declare: “I think in some cases they hate our country”. 

It is pertinent to mention that racist, inflammatory and inaccurate content has circulated on far right blogs, news sites and social media accounts about the four women since they ran for public office. More so because they are women of color. 

With his tweets and crude comments, Trump has elevated that rhetoric, playing into a conspiratorial feedback loop that reared its despicable head repeatedly during his hate-filled campaign and presidency. 

Ilham becomes the biggest target of online vitriol among the four legislators – and she receives more than her fair share of the harshest criticisms. 

And as Trump played to the gallery, it drew chants from the crowd of “Send her back! Send her back!” 

IIham responded on the same day with a series of tweets, including one quoting Maya Angelou’s defiant poem, “Still I Rise,” with the words “You may shoot me with your words... But still, like air, I’ll rise”. 

And she wrote another: “I am where I belong, at the people’s house and you’re just gonna have to deal!” 

Really, the US is not much different from Malaysia, after all. Indeed, misogyny and racism are very much alive and thriving in both countries and likely, everywhere else too!