President Trump’s attack on left-wing congresswomen, including a jab that they should “go back” to their homelands, created a furor. But former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says it may be an example of Trump’s strategic genius.
“It is useful to remember Trump doesn’t play tic-tac-toe. He plays chess, and he’s very often setting up a much deeper fight than you might think, looking at the surface,” Gingrich told the Washington Examiner.
Trump’s tweet was widely criticized as inaccurate and offensive, with three of four apparent targets actually born in the U.S. But Gingrich said Trump wanted to raise the profile of his targets and to more closely link their socialist and anti-Israel policies with the Democratic Party.
“He wants the Democratic Party to identify with them,” Gingrich said. “I think the president is often inartful, but remarkably effective.”
Defending the tweet, Trump attacked Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York at the White House Monday. Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts are his other presumed targets. Only Omar was born abroad, in Somalia.
Trump attacked after tension between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the four, whom she dismissively called “the squad.” Republican strategist Alice Stewart said “the Democratic Party is very divided right now and President Trump’s comments only unified them against him.”
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who 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), now loudly……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019
“Why the president is getting in a Twitter war with two freshmen members of Congress is beyond me; they are not worth his time,” said Stewart, a veteran of four recent GOP presidential campaigns.
But Gingrich said uniting Democrats was the point.
“Pelosi in a sense was trying to draw a line and say, ‘We are not them’. After Trump’s tweet, she said, ‘Oh, we really are them.’ You may have a vote” to admonish Trump for his tweet “in the next day or so when Pelosi lines up with the four radicals,” he said.
Gingrich said he doesn’t believe Trump will be hurt by a perception that his tweet was racist, as “people who willing to believe that are already anti-Trump.”
“There’s no evidence that what he said was racist. What he said was basically designed to say, ‘If you don’t like America, there are a lot of other places you could go,'” Gingrich added. “I thought it was Pelosi who yesterday was being accused of racism by the very four people who she’s now defending. If Pelosi and everyone else is a racist, what does it mean anymore?”
Still, some Trump allies recoiled at Trump’s tweet, noticing the four are all nonwhite.
“I don’t think he’s playing 3D chess here. I don’t think he put a lot of thought into [the tweet],” said former Trump employee and campaign aide Sam Nunberg. “He’s extremely vindictive, and he’s heard Omar say he is less than human. Tlaib said, ‘Let’s impeach the motherfucker.’ Ocasio-Cortez has attacked him.”
Nunberg said he initially felt the tweet may have been more insensitive than his defense of pro-Confederacy demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. But after watching a Monday evening press conference by the four women and re-watching Trump’s heavily Omar-focused attack from earlier in the day, Nunberg called back to update his assessment.
“He may have ended up falling into something by luck,” Nunberg said. “If [Omar] is the face of him being impeached, that helps him.”
