Representatives Ayanna Presley, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib forcefully shot down President Donald Trump‘s racist remarks telling the women of color to “go back” to their countries in a press conference Monday. The four U.S. citizens—who, excepting the Somalian-born Omar, were all born in the U.S.—emphasized that the president’s “xenophobic, bigoted remarks” are a “distraction” from his inhumane policies, with Pressley telling reporters: “We should not take the bait.” “We can sit here and continue to recycle his hateful rhetoric, of which I can not feign surprise . . . because he is if nothing else predictable,” Pressley said. “What we are focused on is the hateful policies, which are draconian and oppressive and life-threatening and family-separating, which are being rolled out by this administration each day.”

The congresswomen were clear and direct about the nature of Trump’s bigoted tweets, which Tlaib described as “simply a continuation of his racist and xenophobic playbook.” Yet the women were emphatic that the president’s comments would not divide them or take their eye off their progressive agenda—and that other Americans of color should not take them to heart. “The first note that I want to tell children across this country is that no matter what the president says, this country belongs to you, and it belongs to everyone,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I am not surprised at what [Trump is] doing. But I also know we’re focused on making it better. We don’t leave the things that we love. And when we love this country, that means that we propose the solutions to fix it . . . We’ll stay focused on our agenda, and we won’t get caught slipping. Because all of this is a distraction. It’s a distraction from what’s most important and from our core values as American citizens.” After Omar noted the “hypocrisy” of Trump blasting the women for complaining about the country’s policies after running on a platform to “Make America Great Again,” Ocasio-Cortez added that the president’s hateful comments were directed at the Democratic women “in order to avoid challenging and debating the policy.” Trump “does not know how to defend his policies, so what he does is attack us personally,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And that is what this is about.” As they decried Trump’s presidency, the congresswomen also emphasized the need to hold him accountable for his actions and “utter disregard and disrespect” for the Constitution—through impeachment. “It is time for us to stop allowing this president to make a mockery out of our constitution,” Omar said. “It’s time to impeach this president.”

In the wake of his initial tweetstorm decrying the elected representatives for speaking out against the treatment of immigrants in detention facilities, the president has only doubled down on his comments, insisting that the women should be the ones apologizing. Trump has specifically singled out Omar, a Muslim-American who has previously come under fire from the right, falsely claiming that she has praised Al-Qaeda and “hates Jews.” Asked about Trump’s lies about her Monday, Omar said that she “will not dignify [the comments] with an answer, because I know that every single Islamophobe, every single person who is hateful, who is driven by an ideology of othering, as this president is, rejoices in us responding to that and us defending ourselves.” “I do not expect every time there is a white supremacist who attacks or there is a white man who kills in a school or in a movie theater . . . I don’t expect my white community members to respond whether they love that person or not,” Omar said. “And so I think it’s beyond time, it’s beyond time, to ask Muslims to condemn terrorists. We are no longer going to allow the dignification of such ridiculous, ridiculous statements.”

The four congresswomen were far from the only ones to denounce Trump’s comments Monday, as fellow Democrats, world leaders, and even a few Republicans stated they believed the president’s words were racist. Republican Rep. Will Hurd called the comments “racist and xenophobic,” as well as “inaccurate,” and Republican Sen. Joni Ernst said when asked if the comments were racist, “Uh, yeah. They’re American citizens.” During the press conference, Pressley emphasized that she had heard from Republicans and Independents in the wake of Trump’s tweets who told her that they “think what he did was wrong, and he won’t apologize, but I am going to apologize.” Though Trump has attempted to divide Democrats by belittling the “squad” of progressive Democrats, who have recently been the subject of pointed comments from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Pressley and the other congresswomen made clear Monday that their “squad” isn’t going away—and it goes far beyond their tight-knit coalition of first-term representatives. “Despite the occupant of the White House’s attempts to marginalize us and silence us, please know that we are more than four people,” Pressley said. “We ran on a mandate to advocate for and represent those ignored, left out, and left behind. Our squad is big. Our squad includes any person committed to building a more equitable and just world. And that is the work we want to get back to. And given the size of this squad, and this great nation, we cannot, we will not be silenced.”

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