As Donald Trump ratchets up his rhetorical attacks against immigrants from Somalia, the federal government has launched a deportation blitz targeting the city with the largest population of that community in the U.S., Minneapolis.
On Tuesday, Trump went on a tirade against the country, singling out the first Somali-American in Congress, Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, whom he called “garbage.”
The next day, the president doubled down and said Somalia “is considered by many to be the worst country on earth,” adding that “what the Somalian people have done to Minnesota is not even believable.”
On Wednesday, the co-hosts of “The Weeknight” sounded off on Trump’s attacks, which Symone Sanders Townsend called “racist and dehumanizing.” The MS NOW host condemned the president for using that kind of hateful rhetoric to speak “about an entire demographic of people.”
“He is talking about teachers, health care workers, people’s friends, families, and neighbors, members of Congress,” the former Biden White House official said.
She then urged Omar’s colleagues to defend the lawmaker against the president’s attacks. “The derogatory way in which he continues to speak about Congresswoman Ilhan Omar should prompt every single member of the United States Congress, Democrat or Republican, to stand up and say, ‘I just can’t get with the racism,’” she said. “That’s the very least they could do.”
Sanders Townsend’s co-host Alicia Menendez said that Trump’s attacks on immigrant communities have never been about their “legality” or fighting “crime,” but instead “xenophobia and racism.”
Fellow co-host Michael Steele agreed: “It is about people who don’t look like him, who don’t come from where he comes and do not see the country the way he sees it.”
“This is the president who referred to people on the African continent as coming from s—hole countries,” Steele explained, referring to reported past statements from Trump. “Racism becomes him.”
And because Trump is the president, the former Republican National Committee chairman said, his racism has also become “a reflection of us to the rest of the world.”
“You have to understand when he speaks like that, what it says about us, not just about him,” Steele said.
You can watch the full discussion between Sanders Townsend, Steele and Menendez in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.