Type to search

NATIONAL

Trump Has New Insults For ‘Squad’ On Way To Justice Stevens Memorial

President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pay their respects at the funeral service Monday, July 22, 2019, for retired U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens at the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pay their respects at the funeral service Monday, July 22, 2019, for retired U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens at the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Official White House, Shealah Craighead)

En route to the funeral for Justice John Paul Stevens, President Trump found time to tweet out more criticism of his favorite progressive targets.

President Trump sent out his newest disparaging tweet towards the “squad,” a group of four progressive congresswomen the president has repeatedly targeted, minutes after his motorcade departed to pay respects to the casket of the late Justice John Paul Stevens at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.

“The ‘Squad’ is a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart. They are pulling the once great Democrat Party far left, and were against humanitarian aid at the Border…And are now against ICE and Homeland Security. So bad for our Country!” tweeted the president.

The four congresswomen, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, fought for basic migrant protections, such as medical and sanitation standards, to be attached to a $4.6 billion funding bill for border security. After Senate Republicans rejected the protections, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi capitulated and passed the Senate version of the bill without oversight requirements.

The squad rejected the watered-down funding bill because it did not contain the oversight requirements they originally negotiated, making the president’s claim misleading.

Trump’s Monday tweet comes a week after the president urged the congresswomen to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” sparking outrage over his clearly racist connotations, as each member of the squad is a racial minority.

Trump tweeted that the four congresswomen “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all),” despite the fact that Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Pressley were all born in the United States, and Omar is a naturalized citizen who immigrated as a child.

Justice Stevens’ Legacy

While the squad has urged the public not to “take the bait,” on Trump’s divisive tweets, the president’s timing drew attention away from the legacy of the widely respected Justice John Paul Stevens, who some political analysts believe foresaw the breakdown in American political discourse during his thirty-four years on the nation’s highest court and after his 2010 retirement.

As the Intercept’s Jon Schwartz notes, the moderate Republican Justice Stevens gave a famous dissent in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which he believed would pervert America’s electoral process by allowing corporations to have the same political rights as people.

“If taken seriously,” Stevens wrote in his opinion, “our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions. … It would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans.”

Similarly, in Justice Stevens’ dissenting opinion in Bush v. Gore, in which the court decided to shut down Florida recounts despite uncertainty and elect George W. Bush president in 2000, the judge believed the population’s confidence in America’s electoral system would diminish in consequence.

“Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear,” wrote Stevens. “It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

Tags:
Peter Castagno

Peter Castagno is a co-owner Citizen Truth.

You Might also Like

2 Comments

  1. Larry Stout July 23, 2019

    Donald Trump himself has become the world’s foremost insult personified — alongside Bibi, MBS, and Boris, that is.

    Reply
  2. Larry Stout August 8, 2019

    Do tanning beds ever catch fire? (We can only hope.)

    Reply

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *