"Go Back": Three of Them Were Born Here, and the House Put the Word "Racist" in the Record

On Sunday morning, the President of the United States looked at four Democratic congresswomen (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan) and tweeted that these "'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe," should:

A brief geography lesson for the President, since the tweet flunked it. The places from which they came:

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez came from the Bronx, New York. Rep. Pressley came from Cincinnati, Ohio. Rep. Tlaib came from Detroit, Michigan. Three of the four people told to go back to their broken countries would, if they complied, need a MetroCard, not a passport.

Rep. Omar came from Mogadishu, by way of a refugee camp, and has been a United States citizen since 2000, which is to say longer than the President's youngest son has been alive. She is precisely as American as the naturalization oath she swore, an oath, we note for the file, that no natural-born citizen, the President included, has ever been required to take.

"Go back where you came from" is not new material. It is the oldest heckle in the American songbook, aimed over the centuries at the Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, the Jews, and every Black American who moved north, and its premise has never varied: that the country belongs to some of its citizens, and the rest are guests whose lease can be read aloud at any time. What is new is the delivery address. It has never before been issued from the presidency, in writing, at sitting members of Congress.

I. THE HOUSE PUTS IT IN WRITING

On Tuesday the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 489, whose title requires no summary because it is the summary: "Condemning President Trump's racist comments directed at Members of Congress." The resolution "strongly condemns President Donald Trump's racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color."

The vote was 240 to 187. Four Republicans, four, out of 197, voted to condemn. The other 193 looked at "go back where you came from," aimed at three natural-born citizens and one naturalized one, and decided the real offense was the resolution. For connoisseurs of procedure: Republicans first tried to strike the word "racist" from the record as a violation of House decorum rules. The word stayed. It is in the Congressional Record now, permanently, attached to a President's name by roll call, for the first time in more than a century.

II. THIRTEEN SECONDS IN GREENVILLE

Wednesday night, at a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, the President worked through his material on Rep. Omar. The crowd answered with a new chant: "send her back." He did not stop it. He did not speak over it. He stood at the podium and let it roll, by the networks' count, for thirteen seconds, which is a long time to stand silently in front of a chant about deporting a citizen, and no time at all if you are enjoying it.

Thursday he told reporters he was "not happy" about the chant and had tried to cut it off. The tape shows the podium, the silence and the thirteen seconds. The tape is not running for reelection, so we are inclined to believe the tape.

III. FOR THE FILE

Two years ago the standard was set in Charlottesville, when a torchlit Nazi march earned a presidential review of "very fine people on both sides." This week the same voice told four members of Congress, three of them born in this country, to go back where they came from, and 98 percent of his party's House members declined to call that what the resolution called it. The word is in the record anyway. 240 to 187. Some weeks the archive writes itself; our job is just the filing.