This Just Gets Worse and Worse

Speaking with reporters outside the White House before jetting off to his private golf club in Bedminster, NJ, on Friday, President Donald Trump backtracked on his bogus backtracking from his weeklong racist rants against Rep. Ilhan Omar and other members of “the Squad,” calling their behavior a “disgrace” and insisting they have no right to criticize the United States.

“I don’t know, I can’t say for sure, but certainly a lot of people say they hate our country,” Trump said, falling back on one of his favorite rhetorical tics.

“I think you can’t talk that way about the United States,” Trump added, before lashing out at Omar specifically for—in his words—introducing a “sanctions bill against Israel.” (actually, she’s simply co-sponsored a bill which “opposes unconstitutional legislative efforts to limit the use of boycotts to further civil rights at home and abroad,” and which doesn’t mention Israel once.)

Trump then smeared the squad with a brazen lie, claiming “they say ‘evil Jews,’” which has never actually happened. (In 2012, in the midst of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Omar tweeted a desire for the world to see the “evil doings of Israel”—a now-deleted message for which she has since apologized).

The comments come at about the 22-minute mark below:

Trump conspicuously avoided questions about how he’d feel if someone urged his wife Melania—a naturalized U.S. citizen like Omar—to “go back home” as he did to the congresswoman. Instead, Trump opined at length about the real pressing issue of our time: Straws.