WASHINGTON D.C (Agencies/CNN) – Outrage over Trump’s racist tweets about four Democratic congresswomen has reached a fever pitch. In a dramatic session last night that involved gavel-throwing by a frustrated Democratic representative and harsh words from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House voted to officially condemn Trump’s language. Four Republicans and one independent voted for the official denunciation. Trump defended his tweets in even more tweets yesterday, saying his words “were NOT Racist” and urging Republicans to vote against the resolution.
The House voted on Tuesday night to condemn racist language from Trump, capping off a tumultuous couple of hours on Capitol Hill including a brief time in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was barred from speaking in the chamber.
The vote was 240-187. Four Republicans and one independent — Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan — supported it as well as all Democrats who voted.
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, one of the congresswomen Trump attacked, said Tuesday’s vote sent a message to young kids who “are wrestling with the weight of those words now coming from the President, that we hear them, we see them and we never will allow anybody to tell them that this isn’t their country.”
The resolution denounced the President for racist comments targeting four Democratic congresswomen of color, but tensions surrounding the procedural fight over Pelosi’s language halted floor action for a heated debate for more than an hour while her words were deliberated.
Pelosi violated House rules with her choice of words condemning Trump’s racist language, leading to a dramatic series of events ahead of the vote. In one such moment of frustration, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri who had been presiding in the chair for much of the fight, blasted Republicans and threw his gavel down, abandoning the chair.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer made the announcement that the House parliamentarian had ruled Pelosi’s comments were not in order and should not be used in debate. The breach of decorum led to a vote on whether to strike her words from the record and a separate vote as to whether the speaker should have her speaking privileges for the day reinstated, privileges that are removed if a lawmaker is found not to be in order.
As expected, the Democratic-controlled House voted not to strike Pelosi’s comments from the record and to allow Pelosi to speak on the floor of the House again, but the dramatic and unprecedented series of events highlighted the partisan anger ignited by Trump’s racist language.
Pelosi told reporters she had “absolutely” no regrets for her language describing the resolution.
“Look, I stand by my statement,” Pelosi said off the House floor. “I’m proud of the attention has been called to it because what the President said was completely inappropriate against our colleagues but not just against them but against so many people in our country and he said to them ‘go back to where you came from.'”
At a press conference on Monday, Omar condemned the President’s words as “a blatantly racist attack on four duly elected members of the United States of House of Representatives, all of whom are women of color.”
Omar went on to say, “This is the agenda of white nationalists, whether it is happening in chat rooms or it’s happening on national TV, and now it’s reached the White House garden.”
Kellyanne Conway prides herself on her combativeness with the press. It’s a trait that has long endeared her to President Donald Trump and kept her in his ever-shrinking inner circle of advisers. But yesterday, on Tuesday afternoon, she went too far — even for her. Read here.
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