GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday he has no regrets about his ongoing spat with four Democratic Congresswomen of color that began with tweets widely criticized as racist.
Trump told reporters he thinks he’s “winning the political argument” and “winning it by a lot.”
Speaking as he departed the White House for a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, Trump dug in on his attacks.
“If people want to leave our country, they can. If they don’t want to love our country, if they don’t want to fight for our country, they can,” Trump said. “I’ll never change on that.”
Trump is showing no signs of backing down from his strategy of tying the Democratic Party to the four liberal lawmakers, even after a Democratic-led House voted to condemn his comments as racist. All four lawmakers are American citizens, and three of them were born in the United States.
“I’m enjoying it because I have to get the word out to the American people,” he said. “They’re absolutely wrong. That’s not where our country wants to be. We’re not going to go and we’re not going to be a socialist country.”
Trump began the week attacking Democratic freshmen Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and has not relented.
In response to a question from a conservative news outlet about whether Omar should be investigated for possibly marrying her brother, Trump said: “There’s a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother. I know nothing about it. I hear she was married to her brother. You’re asking me a question about it. I don’t know, but I’m sure that somebody will be looking at that.”
Omar came to the United States as a refugee from war-torn Somalia. In 2016, as Omar was running for a seat in the Minnesota House, conservative bloggers alleged she was married to two men at the same time. Marriage records show that’s not the case. Conservatives also alleged that one of those men, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, was her brother — allegations that Omar called “disgusting lies.”
Omar broadly denied the allegations in a statement to The Associated Press, but declined to provide documents or answer specific questions when pressed.
Trump narrowly won North Carolina in 2016.
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