Tlaib Declines To Visit West Bank, Citing Israeli Conditions

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., speaks to constituents in Wixom, Mich., Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

BY JOSEPH KRAUSS, ISAAC SCHARF

JERUSALEM (AP) — Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib said Friday she would not visit her grandmother in the occupied West Bank, despite being granted an Israeli permit on humanitarian grounds, saying Israel’s “oppressive” conditions aimed to humiliate her.

Israel barred Tlaib and another Democrat, Rep. Ilhan Omar, from visiting Jerusalem and the West Bank over their support for the international boycott movement following an unprecedented appeal from President Donald Trump to deny them entry.

Israel had said Tlaib could visit relatives in the West Bank on humanitarian grounds. The Interior Ministry released a letter purportedly signed by Tlaib in which she promised not to advocate boycotts during her visit.

“Visiting my grandmother under these oppressive conditions meant to humiliate me would break my grandmother’s heart,” she said in a statement. “Silencing me with treatment to make me feel less-than is not what she wants for me — it would kill a piece of me that always stands up against racism and injustice.”

It was not immediately clear if she had initially agreed to the Israeli conditions, and if so what caused her to change her mind.

Tlaib and Omar had planned to visit Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank next week on a tour organized by a Palestinian group. The two are outspoken critics of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and support the Palestinian-led international movement boycotting Israel.

The two newly elected Muslim members of Congress have sparred with Trump, who tweeted before the decision that it would be a “show of weakness” to allow them in. Israel controls entry and exit to the West Bank, which it seized in the 1967 Mideast war along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip — territories the Palestinians want for a future state.

Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri announced that Tlaib had requested and been granted permission to enter the West Bank to see relatives. The U.S.-born Tlaib’s family immigrated from the West Bank.

Deri’s office released what it said was Tlaib’s written request, on congressional stationery dated Thursday, in which she said she wanted to visit her grandmother, who is in her 90s.

“This could be my last opportunity to see her. I will respect any restrictions and will not promote boycotts against Israel during my visit,” she said. Tlaib’s office could not immediately be reached for comment on the letter’s authenticity.

Shortly after the announcement, however, Tlaib tweeted that she wouldn’t allow Israel to use her love for her grandmother to force her to “bow down to their oppressive & racist policies.”

“When I won (in 2018), it gave the Palestinian people hope that someone will finally speak the truth about the inhumane conditions. I can’t allow the State of Israel to take away that light by humiliating me,” she wrote.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization whose Miftah group had organized the original congressional visit, said she was not involved in the latest request.

“Miftah does not sponsor personal or individual or humanitarian visits nor do we intervene on behalf of any such petitions. As we announced yesterday, our delegation’s visit has been postponed until such time as all Congressional participants can have free access to Palestine,” she tweeted.

Trump’s request to a foreign country to bar the entry of elected U.S. officials — and Israel’s decision to do so — were unprecedented and drew widespread criticism, including from many Israelis as well as staunch supporters of Israel in Congress. Critics said it risked turning Israel into a partisan issue and threatened to undermine ties between the close allies.

Tlaib and Omar are known as supporters of “boycott, divestment and sanctions,” or BDS, a Palestinian-led global movement. Supporters say the movement is a nonviolent way of protesting Israel’s military rule over the occupied territories, but Israel says it aims to delegitimize the state and eventually wipe it off the map.

Tlaib and Omar are also part of the “squad” of liberal newcomers — all women of color — whom Trump has labeled as the face of the Democratic Party as he runs for re-election. He subjected them to a series of racist tweets last month in which he called on them to “go back” to their “broken” countries. They are U.S. citizens.

Trump’s latest move brought a longtime U.S. ally into a domestic dispute, essentially relying on Israel to retaliate against Tlaib and Omar after they had criticized him. It marked a glaring departure from the tradition of American politicians leaving such disputes at the water’s edge.

For Israel, the willingness to side so pointedly with Trump marks a deeper foray into America’s bitterly polarized politics and risks its relationship with Congress.

Israel announced the ban Thursday after Trump tweeted that “it would show great weakness” if the two were allowed to visit. Asked later if he had spoken to Netanyahu, he said, “I did talk to people over there,” without elaborating.

Omar, who became the first Somali American elected to Congress, denounced the ban on her and Tlaib’s tour as “an affront” and “an insult to democratic values.”

Netanyahu said Thursday his country remains “open to critics and criticism,” except for those who advocate boycotts against it.

Israel Bars Entry To Outspoken US Congresswomen

In this July 15, 2019, file photo, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, right, speaks, as U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. listens, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington. The U.S. envoy to Israel said he supports Israel's decision to deny entry to two Muslim congresswomen ahead of their planned visit to Jerusalem and the West Bank. Ambassador David Friedman said Thursday, Aug. 15, 2019, in a statement following the Israeli government's announcement that Israel "has every right to protect its borders" against promoters of boycotts "in the same manner as it would bar entrants with more conventional weapons." (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

BY ILAN BEN ZION

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel said Thursday that it will bar two Democratic congresswomen from entering the country ahead of a planned visit over their support for a Palestinian-led boycott movement, a decision announced shortly after President Donald Trump tweeted that it would “show great weakness” to allow them in.

The move to bar Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota from visiting appeared to be unprecedented. It marked a deep foray by Israel into America’s bitterly polarized politics and a sharp escalation of Israel’s campaign against the international boycott movement.

The two newly-elected Muslim members of Congress are outspoken critics of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and have repeatedly sparred with Trump over a range of issues. Tlaib’s family immigrated to the United States from the West Bank, where she still has close relatives.

They had planned to visit Jerusalem and the West Bank on a tour organized by a Palestinian organization aimed at highlighting the plight of the Palestinians. It was not immediately clear if they had planned to meet with Israeli officials, and spokespeople for the two congresswomen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is “open to critics and criticism,” except for those who advocate boycotts against it.

“Congresswomen Tlaib and Omar are leading activists in promoting the legislation of boycotts against Israel in the American Congress,” Netanyahu charged. He said their itinerary “revealed that they planned a visit whose sole objective is to strengthen the boycott against us and deny Israel’s legitimacy.”

Omar denounced the decision as “an affront” and “an insult to democratic values.”

“This is not a surprise given the public positions of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has consistently resisted peace efforts, restricted the freedom of movement of Palestinians, limited public knowledge of the brutal realities of the occupation and aligned himself with Islamophobes like Donald Trump,” Omar said in a statement.

Shortly before the decision was announced, Trump had tweeted that “it would show great weakness” if Israel allowed them to visit. “They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds.” He went on to call the two congresswomen “a disgrace.”

The U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, endorsed the decision after it was made, saying Israel “has every right to protect its borders” against promoters of boycotts “in the same manner as it would bar entrants with more conventional weapons.”

Trump’s decision to urge a foreign country to deny entry to elected U.S. officials was a striking departure from the long-held practice of politicians from both parties of leaving their disputes at the water’s edge.

Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. Congress denounced Israel’s decision.

Top ranking Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York said it was a sign of weakness instead of strength and “will only hurt the U.S.-Israeli relationship and support for Israel in America.” A close freshman colleague of the two lawmakers, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, said Israel’s move is “bigoted, short sighted and cruel.”

Israel has sought to combat the BDS movement, which advocates boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli businesses, universities and cultural institutions. The country passed a law permitting a ban on entry to any activist who “knowingly issues a call for boycotting Israel.”

Last month, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer had said Israel would not deny entry to any member of Congress.

The interior ministry said in statement Thursday that “the state of Israel respects the American Congress, in the framework of the close alliance between the two countries, but it’s unacceptable to allow the entrance to the country of those who wish to harm the state of Israel, especially during their visit.”

Israel said it would consider any request from Tlaib to visit relatives on humanitarian grounds.

Supporters of the boycott movement say it is a non-violent way to protest Israeli policies and call for Palestinian rights. Critics say the boycott movement aims to delegitimize Israel and ultimately erase it from the map, replacing it with a binational state.

Israel often hosts delegations of U.S. representatives and senators, who usually meet with senior Israeli officials as well as Palestinian officials in the occupied West Bank. Israel controls entry and exit points to the West Bank, which it seized along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek these territories for their future state.

MIFTAH, the Palestinian organization that was set to host Tlaib and Omar in the West Bank, issued a statement saying that Israel’s decision was “an affront to the American people and their representatives” and “an assault on the Palestinian people’s right to reach out to decision-makers and other actors from around the world.”

The move could further sharpen divisions among Democrats over Israel ahead of the 2020 elections. Republicans have amplified the views of left-wing Democrats like Tlaib and Omar to present the party as deeply divided and at odds with Israel. Democratic leaders have pushed back, reiterating the party’s strong support for Israel, in part to protect representatives from more conservative districts.

In July, the Democratic-led House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution against the BDS movement.

Tlaib and Omar have also been the target of repeated attacks by President Donald Trump in recent months, including a series of racist tweets on July 14 in which he said they should “go back” to the “broken” countries they came from. Both are U.S. citizens and Tlaib was born in the United States. The two are members of the so-called “Squad” of newly-elected left-wing Democrats, along with Pressley and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

Dan Shapiro, U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, said that he knew of “no such precedent” for Israel barring an elected American official from entering the country, calling the decision “short-sighted.”

“There’s no reason to prevent members of Congress, including critical ones, from coming, seeing and learning, offering them every possible briefing,” Shapiro said. “By refusing them entry, it will only fuel the very things that Israel claims to be unhappy about” when it comes to calls for boycotts.

Arthur Lenk, formerly Israel’s ambassador to South Africa, said barring Omar and Tlaib “would be sinking us deeper into U.S. domestic political quagmire.”

Israeli lawmaker Ayman Odeh, leader of the Joint List of Arab parties, also criticized the move, writing that “Israel has always banned Palestinians from their land and separated us from other Palestinians, but this time the Palestinian is a U.S. Congresswoman.”

Follow Ilan Ben Zion on Twitter at www.twitter.com/IlanBenZion

Scaramucci: Trump's Attacks On Congresswomen 'Against The Idealistic Values Of America'

Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, warned the president's racist attacks would hemorrhage “a glacier of support” during his 2020 reelection bid. Image: Mike Coppola/Getty

BY QUINT FORGEY

POLITICO

Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, predicted Thursday that President Donald Trump’s racist attacks on four progressive congresswomen could help propel him to a second term in office.

But Scaramucci also warned the president will hemorrhage “a glacier of support” during his 2020 reelection bid if he refuses to cool his rhetoric, which the ex-Trump aide denounced as antithetical to the nation’s values.

“They won last time, so it may be a winning campaign strategy, but it is against the idealistic values of America,” Scaramucci told CNN.

“And so what ends up happening,” he continued, “is it's such a turnoff to a large group of people that you are running a risk that 15% of the people that you want to get you through that electoral map and back into the presidency say, 'You know what? I love the policies, but I don't like the “send her back” rhetoric. I don't like the racist rhetoric of sending people back to the homes that they came from.’”

The president this week has steadily ramped up his incendiary criticism of the quartet of high-profile freshman House members and women of color — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — since first tweeting Sunday that they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."

Three of the four lawmakers — Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley and Tlaib — were born in the U.S. and Omar, a refugee from Somalia, has been a citizen since she was 17.

Trump continued the verbal onslaught at a campaign rally Wednesday evening in North Carolina, goading the the assembled crowd at Greenville’s East Carolina University to break out in chants of “send her back.”

Scaramucci, who insisted Thursday that he still supports the president, said he would like for Trump “to conform that behavior” and alleged that “he has friends of his in the White House that are working for him that are telling reporters that these tweets are racist.”

Scaramucci cautioned: “If he continues on that path, he's going to lose like a glacier of support [that] is going to break off and float away from him in a way that he doesn't fully understand."

House Condemns Trump 'Racist' Tweets In Extraordinary Rebuke

From left, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., respond to remarks by President Donald Trump after his call for the four Democratic congresswomen to go back to their "broken" countries, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, July 15, 2019. All are American citizens and three of the four were born in the U.S. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

BY ALAN FRAM, DARLENE SUPERVILLE

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a remarkable political repudiation, the Democratic-led U.S. House voted Tuesday night to condemn President Donald Trump’s “racist comments” against four congresswomen of color, despite protestations by Trump’s Republican congressional allies and his own insistence he hasn’t “a racist bone in my body.”

Two days after Trump tweeted that four Democratic freshmen should “go back” to their home countries — though all are citizens and three were born in the U.S.A. — Democrats muscled the resolution through the chamber by 240-187 over near-solid GOP opposition. The rebuke was an embarrassing one for Trump even though it carries no legal repercussions, but if anything his latest harangues should help him with his die-hard conservative base.

Despite a lobbying effort by Trump and party leaders for a unified GOP front, four Republicans voted to condemn his remarks: moderate Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Fred Upton of Michigan, Will Hurd of Texas and Susan Brooks of Indiana, who is retiring. Also backing the measure was Michigan’s independent Rep. Justin Amash, who left the GOP this month after becoming the party’s sole member of Congress to back a Trump impeachment inquiry.

Democrats saved one of the day’s most passionate moments until near the end. “I know racism when I see it,” said Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, whose skull was fractured at the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” civil rights march in Selma, Alabama. “At the highest level of government, there’s no room for racism.”

Before the showdown roll call, Trump characteristically plunged forward with time-tested insults. He accused his four outspoken critics of “spewing some of the most vile, hateful and disgusting things ever said by a politician” and added, “If you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave !” — echoing taunts long unleashed against political dissidents rather than opposing parties’ lawmakers.

The president was joined by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and other top Republicans in trying to redirect the focus from Trump’s original tweets, which for three days have consumed Washington and drawn widespread condemnation. Instead, they tried playing offense by accusing the four congresswomen — among the Democrats’ most left-leaning members and ardent Trump critics — of socialism, an accusation that’s already a central theme of the GOP’s 2020 presidential and congressional campaigns.

Even after two-and-a-half years of Trump’s turbulent governing style, the spectacle of a president futilely laboring to head off a House vote essentially proclaiming him to be a racist was extraordinary.

Underscoring the stakes, Republicans formally objected after Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said during a floor speech that Trump’s tweets were “racist.” Led by Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, Republicans moved to have her words stricken from the record, a rare procedural rebuke.

After a delay exceeding 90 minutes, No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Pelosi had indeed violated a House rule against characterizing an action as racist. Hoyer was presiding after Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri stormed away from the presiding officer’s chair, lamenting, “We want to just fight,” apparently aimed at Republicans. Even so, Democrats flexed their muscle and the House voted afterward by party line to leave Pelosi’s words intact in the record.

Some rank-and-file GOP lawmakers have agreed that Trump’s words were racist, but on Tuesday party leaders insisted they were not and accused Democrats of using the resulting tumult to score political points. Among the few voices of restraint, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Trump wasn’t racist, but he also called on leaders “from the president to the speaker to the freshman members of the House” to attack ideas, not the people who espouse them.

“There’s been a consensus that political rhetoric has gotten way, way heated across the political spectrum,” said the Republican leader from Kentucky, breaking his own two days of silence on Trump’s attacks.

Hours earlier, Trump tweeted, “Those Tweets were NOT Racist. I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!” He wrote that House Republicans should “not show ‘weakness’” by agreeing to a resolution he labeled “a Democrat con game.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, one of Trump’s four targets, returned his fire.

“You’re right, Mr. President - you don’t have a racist bone in your body. You have a racist mind in your head and a racist heart in your chest,” she tweeted.

The four-page Democratic resolution said the House “strongly condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.” It said Trump’s slights “do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America.”

All but goading Republicans, the resolution included a full page of remarks by President Ronald Reagan, who is revered by the GOP. Reagan said in 1989 that if the U.S. shut its doors to newcomers, “our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

Tuesday’s faceoff came after years of Democrats bristling over anti-immigrant and racially incendiary pronouncements by Trump. Those include his kicking off his presidential campaign by proclaiming many Mexican migrants to be criminals and asserting there were “fine people” on both sides at a 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned deadly.

And the strong words in Washington come as actions are underway elsewhere: The administration has begun coast-to-coast raids targeting migrants in the U.S. illegally and has newly restricted access to the U.S. by asylum seekers.

Trump’s criticism was aimed at four freshman Democrats who have garnered attention since their arrival in January for their outspoken liberal views and thinly veiled distaste for Trump: Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. All were born in the U.S. except for Omar, who came to the U.S. as a child after fleeing Somalia with her family.

The four have waged an increasingly personal clash with Pelosi over how assertively the House should try restraining Trump’s ability to curb immigration. But if anything, Trump’s tweets may have eased some of that tension, with Pelosi telling Democrats at a closed-door meeting Tuesday, “We are offended by what he said about our sisters,” according to an aide who described the private meeting on condition of anonymity.

That’s not to say that all internal Democratic strains are resolved.

The four rebellious freshmen backed Rep. Steven Cohen of Tennessee in unsuccessfully seeking a House to vote on a harsher censure of Trump’s tweets. And Rep. Al Green of Texas was trying to force a House vote soon on whether to impeach Trump — a move he’s tried in the past but lost, earning opposition from most Democrats.

At the Senate Republicans’ weekly lunch Tuesday, Trump’s tweets came up and some lawmakers were finding the situation irksome, participants said. Many want the 2020 campaigns to focus on progressive Democrats’ demands for government-provided health care, abolishing the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and other hard-left policies.

“Those ideas give us so much material to work with and it takes away from our time to talk about it,” Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana said of Trump’s tweets.

AP reporters Jill Colvin, Zeke Miller and Jonathan Lemire and Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed.

4 Democratic Women Slam Trump's 'Xenophobic Bigoted Remarks'

From left, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., respond to remarks by President Donald Trump after his call for the four Democratic congresswomen to go back to their "broken" countries, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, July 15, 2019. All are American citizens and three of the four were born in the U.S. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

BY ZEKE MILLER, JILL COLVIN, JONATHAN LEMIRE

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defiant in the face of widespread censure, President Donald Trump escalated his demand for four Democratic congresswomen of color to leave the U.S. “right now,” stoking the discord that helped send him to the White House and claiming “many people agree with me.”

At the Capitol, the four lawmakers fired back, condemning what they called “xenophobic bigoted remarks” and renewing calls for Democrats to begin impeachment proceedings.

Trump had called on the four to “go back” to their “broken and crime-infested” countries in tweets that have been widely denounced as racist . His remarks were directed at Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. All are American citizens, and three of the four were born in the U.S.

The episode served notice that Trump is willing to again rely on incendiary rhetoric on issues of race and immigration to preserve his political base in the leadup to the 2020 election.

“It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me,” Trump said Monday at the White House. “A lot of people love it, by the way.”

At the Capitol, there was near unanimous condemnation from Democrats and a rumble of discontent from a subset of Republicans, but notably not from the party’s congressional leaders.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said Trump’s campaign slogan truly means he wants to “make America white again,” announced Monday that the House would vote on a resolution condemning his new comments . The resolution “strongly condemns” Trump’s “racist comments” and says they “have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.”

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the party’s White House nominee in 2012 and now one of the president’s most vocal GOP critics, said Trump’s comments were “destructive, demeaning, and disunifying.”

Far from backing down, Trump dug in.

“If you’re not happy in the U.S., if you’re complaining all the time, you can leave, you can leave right now,” he said.

The president’s words, which evoked the trope of telling black people to go back to Africa, may have been partly meant to widen the divides within the House Democratic caucus, which has been riven by internal debate over how best to oppose his policies. And while Trump’s attacks brought Democrats together in defense of their colleagues, his allies noted he was also having some success in making the progressive lawmakers the face of their party.

The Republican president questioned whether Democrats should “want to wrap” themselves around this group of four people as he recited a list of the quartet’s most controversial statements.

Trump “does not know how to defend his policies and so what he does is attack us personally,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, said his party would also try to force a vote in the GOP-controlled chamber.

Trump, who won the presidency in 2016 in part by energizing disaffected voters with inflammatory racial rhetoric, made clear he has no intention of backing away from that strategy in 2020.

“The Dems were trying to distance themselves from the four ‘progressives,’ but now they are forced to embrace them,” he tweeted Monday afternoon. “That means they are endorsing Socialism, hate of Israel and the USA! Not good for the Democrats!”

Trump has faced few consequences for such attacks in the past. They typically earn him cycles of wall-to-wall media attention. He is wagering that his most steadfast supporters will be energized by the controversy as much, or if not more so, than the opposition.

“It’s possible I’m wrong,” Trump allowed Monday. “The voters will decide.”

The president has told aides that he was giving voice to what many of his supporters believe — that they are tired of people, including immigrants, disrespecting their country, according to three Republicans close to the White House who were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

Trump singled out Omar, in particular, accusing her of having “hatred” for Israel and expressing “love” for “enemies like al-Qaida.”

“These are people that, in my opinion, hate our country,” he said.

Omar, in an interview, once laughed about how a college professor had spoken of al-Qaida with an intensity she said was not used to describe “America,” ″England” or “The Army.”

She addressed herself directly to Trump in a tweet, writing, “You are stoking white nationalism (because) you are angry that people like us are serving in Congress and fighting against your hate-filled agenda.”

Republicans largely trod carefully with their responses.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close ally of the president who golfed with him over the weekend, advised him to “aim higher” during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” even as he accused the four Democrats of being “anti-Semitic” and “anti-American.”

Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said “I don’t think that the president’s intent in any way is racist,” pointing to Trump’s decision to choose Elaine Chao, who was born outside the country, as his transportation secretary.

Chao is one of the few minorities among the largely white and male aides in high-profile roles in Trump’s administration. She is the wife of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who declined to comment Monday on Trump’s attacks.

Among the few GOP lawmakers commenting Monday, Rep. Pete Olson of Texas said Trump’s tweets were “not reflective of the values of the 1,000,000+ people” in his district.

“We are proud to be the most diverse Congressional district in America,” he wrote. “I urge our President immediately disavow his comments.”

Several other Republicans went out of their way to say they were not condoning the views of the Democrats, while encouraging Trump to retract his comments.

In an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from February 2017, half of Americans said the mixing of culture and values from around the world is an important part of America’s identity as a nation. Fewer, about a third, said the same of a culture established by early European immigrants.

But partisans in that poll were divided over these aspects of America’s identity. About two-thirds of Democrats but only about a third of Republicans thought the mixing of world cultures was important to the country’s identity. By comparison, nearly half of Republicans but just about a quarter of Democrats saw the culture of early European immigrants as important to the nation.

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Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.

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Lemire reported from New York. Follow Miller on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@ZekeJMiller , Colvin at http://twitter.com/@ColvinJ and Lemire at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire .