Donald Trump has declared that controversial tweets in which he told four Congresswomen to “go home” were not racist.
The US president said his missives against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan “were NOT racist”.
“I don’t have a racist bone in my body!” he wrote on Tuesday.
It followed messages on Sunday that said the four left-wing lawmakers, known in Congress as “the squad”, should go back to “the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
All four of the first-term House of Representative members are American citizens and all but one, Omar, who came to the US as a refugee from Somalia, were born in the United States.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been criticised by members of “the squad” said her party would introduce a resolution condemning Trump’s “xenophobic tweets”.
A draft of the resolution, seen by the Reuters news agency on Monday, said the House “strongly condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color ...”
Representative Steny Hoyer, the No 2 Democrat in the House, told reporters the resolution could be on the House floor for debate as soon as Tuesday.
Such a resolution could put Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress in an awkward position, forcing them either to vote against their party’s leader, who has strong support among conservatives, or effectively to defend his statements.
Trump’s attacks elevated the profiles of the four progressive Democrats, who have helped push the party’s agenda to the left, causing concern among Democratic moderates who are eager to hold onto their seats in the 2020 election.