Several Fox News personalities, contributors and correspondents criticized President Trump on Monday for a series of tweets telling four progressive, nonwhite congresswomen to “go back” to other countries, reports The Hill.
Fox's chief White House correspondent John Roberts confronted Trump in person about the attack, asking the president during an impromptu news conference on Monday, “Does it concern you that many people saw that tweet as racist, and that white nationalist groups are finding common cause with you on that point?”
“It doesn’t concern me at all because many people agree with me,” Trump responded. "And all I’m saying is if they want to leave, they can leave."
“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade, who often expresses support for the president, said on the network's “Outnumbered” that Trump's attacks were “a mistake” but argued that the president was trying to make them the controversial faces of the Democratic Party.
"In one way, the president saying ‘Why did he weigh in the way he did?’ It makes him the story. The other thing is he is underlying it. He’s saying ‘Democrats, these are your leaders, these are your rock stars, good luck,' " he said.
Co-panelist Harris Faulkner called the attacks “an old trope that has been used against people of color” but also accused the congresswomen of “pick[ing] on a man who likes to fight.”
The remarks came after Trump started a firestorm of controversy Sunday when he tweeted that " 'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen" should "go back and fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."
The tweets appeared to be directed at Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), all of whom are U.S. citizens. Only Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia, was born outside the U.S. The comments have widely been condemned by the Democratic Party as racist.
Fox News political analyst Jessica Tarlov compared the tweets to Trump’s promotion of the racist "birther" conspiracy theory that former President Obama was not born in the United States.
Most Fox contributors and personalities stopped short of calling Trump's statements racist. Fox's Brit Hume tweeted that the president's attacks were "nativist, xenophobic, counterfactual and politically stupid."
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