Yes, some Republican leaders spoke out to offer mostly muted criticism of Trump after more than 24 hours, often in the next breath (or the first breath) criticizing the Democratic women of color Trump attacked.
“They’re just terrified of crossing swords with Trump, and they stay mute even when the president unleashes racist tirades,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, who has been critical of Trump. “Republican leaders are now culpable for encouraging this kind of rank bigotry. By not speaking out, by staying mum, they are greenlighting hate rhetoric.”—“Trump’s incendiary rhetoric is met with fading resistance from Republican and corporate leaders,” Toluse Olorunnipa, Washington Post, July 15, 2019
The WaPo article notes the silence of corporate leaders (including those on the South Lawn of the White House celebrating Trump’s economic policies) as Trump continued to defame four women newly elected to Congress as members of his political opposition.
After some brief remarks about American manufacturing, the president launched into an acerbic screed doubling down on his Sunday tweets that encouraged the Democratic congresswomen, who he said “hate our country,” to leave the United States.
“If you’re not happy here, then you can leave,” he added. “That’s what I said in a tweet that I guess some people think is controversial. A lot of people love it, by the way. A lot of people love it.”
He was met with applause.
It seems that for many people Trump being Trump is hardly worthy of comment any more, even as he ratchets up the racism, xenophobia, and hate. Certainly Trump wouldn’t be Trump without the racism:
Trump has trafficked in racist and racially charged politics for decades, working to keep African Americans out of his and his father’s apartment buildings in Cincinnati and New York from his earliest days in the real estate business.
In 1989, he ran newspaper ads calling for the death penalty after five black and Latino teenagers were accused of raping a jogger. Last month, he suggested the Central Park Five might still be guilty even if they were exonerated by DNA evidence and another man’s confession years ago, saying, “You have people on both sides of that.”
Trump raised his profile as a political figure on the right during President Obama’s tenure by fanning false conspiracies questioning whether Obama was born in the United States.
And he drew some of the strongest rebukes of his own presidency in August 2017 when he said there were “very fine people on both sides” in violent clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va.
James Fields, who drove his car into a crowd and killed a woman during the rally, was sentenced Monday to life in prison plus 419 years on state charges. Fields was previously sentenced to life in prison on federal hate crime charges.— “As Trump doubles down on racist comments, House to vote on condemning them,” Noah Bierman, Jennifer Haberkorn, Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2019
(Image: screen grab from local TV of the four newly elected Democratic Congresswomen, popularly known as ‘the squad,’ responding to President Trump’s attacks yesterday.)