US House to Vote on Resolution Condemning Trump's 'Racist Comments' | Voice of America - English
This story was updated on July 16 at 12:15 pm. U.S.
WHITE HOUSE - U.S. President Donald Trump declared  "I don't have a racist bone in my body” as he continued to push back on criticism that his comments directed at four Democratic Congresswomen of color crossed the line into blatant racism and xenophobia. Trump has repeatedly since Sunday targeted the four members of the House of Representatives, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayana Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. Trump, on Twitter again on Tuesday morning, while denying his tweets were racist, slammed the four women who are to the left of the party’s mainstream, saying based on their actions they “hate our Country.” The Democrat-led House of Representatives is set to vote Tuesday on a resolution “condemning President Trump's racist comments” targeting the four lawmakers. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced the vote and said he hoped Republicans would “put country before party” and vote in favor of the measure alongside Democrats. The resolution is being condemned by the Republicans, who are in the minority in the House. “It’s all politics,” decried the Republican leader in the House Kevin McCarthy. “This is one more chance to go after our president,” said Rep. Steve Scalise, the second highest-ranking Republican in the House. Trump set off a firestorm on by telling the four Democratic lawmakers to “go back” to their countries and fix their homelands before they attack him and the U.S., although all four are U.S. citizens, with Somali refugee Omar a naturalized U.S. citizen and the other three U.S. citizens by birth. The targets of Trump's attacks appeared before reporters Monday in a collective and blistering show of force to rebut Trump's social media and verbal volleys against them. “He's launching a blatantly racist attack on four duly elected members of the United States House of Representatives, all of whom are women of color,” said Omar, a Minnesota congresswoman. “This is the agenda of white nationalists.” Omar and Tlaib, who are the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, explicitly called for Trump's impeachment.