In a Disgraceful Tweet, Trump Urges Israel to Bar Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib
“It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib to visit. They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds. Minnesota and Michigan will have a hard time putting them back in office. They are a disgrace!” President Trump tweeted this morning.
Want to know what a real disgrace is? It is the President of the United States calling upon the head of a foreign government, in this case, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, to deny to two female Muslim sitting members of Congress, Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, entry into that country. According to The New York Times, last week, Trump weighed in on Minnesota Democrat Omar and Michigan Democrat Tlaib’s potential “tour of the West Bank, partly under the auspices of an organization headed by a longtime Palestinian lawmaker, Hanan Ashrawi, that was expected to highlight Palestinian grievances over the Israeli occupation…. It was also not clear why the Israelis were considering stopping the visit, which has bipartisan support in Congress.”
Mere hours after Trump’s tweet, it was reported that Israel has indeed stopped the visit. According to the Times, “Israel on Thursday barred the entry of two American Democratic congresswomen who had planned to visit the West Bank, the deputy foreign minister on Israeli radio said, hours after President Trump had urged the country to bar them.”
Is Trump’s fresh hateful rhetoric (and we will no doubt hear more of it at his New Hampshire rally tonight) just another diversionary tactic on the part of the president, desperate to draw attention away from a spiraling stock market, a spate of domestic terrorist shootings, and mounting evidence that there is more than sufficient grounds for his impeachment? Or is this merely another instance of his ad nauseum pandering to his insatiable base? Or yet another example of his free-flowing, out-of-control racism?
Of course, it might just be all of the above.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
