The media misled Americans when it reported that President Donald Trump ordered progressive congresswomen of color to “go back” to their “crime-infested” hellhole countries, a Trump 2020 re-election campaign official insisted Sunday. According to Matt Wolking, Trump did say that, but he didn’t say forever. The president pointed out that they could return to the U.S. after they help “fix” things in the other countries he imagines they’re from.
Three of the four progressive female lawmakers he was clearly targeting were born in the United States. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) have more generations of Americans in their ancestries than Trump, whose paternal grandfather and mother were immigrants. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) was born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrant parents. Only Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was born in a foreign country — Somalia — and moved as a child to America, where she became a citizen.
“Anyone who says the president told members of Congress to go back to where they came from is lying,” tweeted Wolking, communications deputy director of Donald J. Trump for President. “He told them to ‘Then come back and show us how it is done.’” Wolking’s tweet included a screenshot of Trump’s message in which he clearly writes: “Why don’t they go back” to the “crime-infested places from which they came.”
Wolking was hired by the Trump campaign in March to head its “aggressive rapid response team, refuting attacks and exposing the fake news media,” according to a statement from the operation reported at the time by The Associated Press.
Many who read Wolking’s jaw-dropping defense of Trump’s statement couldn’t believe their eyes.