President Trump’s Sunday morning tweetstorm in which he alluded to unnamed “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen,” and politely (?) suggested they “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” ignited a firestorm on the Right, as we discussed here on Monday.
“Was the President indulging in nativism? Or worse, racism? how bad is this going to make us look? Egads!”
What Trump was indulging in was #Winning™, as even congressional Democrats admitted to Jake Tapper… off the record, of course.
House Democrats appeared unified in their votes this week but I've spent the day talking to a bunch of them and many are extremely frustrated. All agree POTUS's tweets needed to be condemned; they spoke under condition of anonymity so they could be candid. (Thread)
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 17, 2019
In a follow-up tweet, the CNN host wrote:
“The president won this one,” said House Dem 1 of the Trump v Squad (AOC, Tlaib, Omar & Pressley) showdown. “What the president has done is politically brilliant. Pelosi was trying to marginalize these folks and the president has now identified the entire party with them.”
More:
5/ Other House Democrats are conflicted about having to defend the Squad given things they've said and done. House Dems cited: talk of supporting challengers to incumbent Dems in primaries, AOC's use of the term "concentration camps," anti-Semitic comments by Tlaib & Omar.
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 17, 2019
Far from unifying the Democrats, as some Republican hand-wringers fretted, Trump’s tweets are tearing them further apart behind the scenes. Others noted that this week the House Democratic Caucus stood by a group that is not perceived as standing by them. Tapper quotes another anonymous House Democrat telling him privately, “I can’t tell you the number of Members who are angry and annoyed about them criticizing us.”
“Privately.” Heh. I kid with that word.
There are things politicians say off the record that they don’t want coming out in public, in order to gain a reporter’s trust, spoil their relations with some other politician, etc. Then there are the things politicians say off the record because they do want them out there, just not with their names attached. What Tapper was told — by at least three congressional Democrats — was the latter. They’re hoping, you can be sure, to regain the distance between themselves and “The Squad” that Trump closed on Sunday morning.
Good luck with that.
You can’t counter a major-media offensive by the president of United States just by getting Jake Tapper to tweet your anonymous complaints about how you got tricked into associating yourself with your party’s most-radical and least-liked congresscritters. It just doesn’t work that way. And yet a handful of Democrats tried anyway, because that weak move was the best one Trump had left them.
Their desperation is palpable, and it’s kind of sad that some Republicans still can’t — or won’t? — sense it.
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