NH Primary Source: NHGOP chair Stepanek defends Trump, blasts Democratic critics
STEPANEK REACTS. State Republican Party Chair Steve Stepanek made his position clear regarding President Donald Trump’s controversial tweets described by critics and many media outlets as racist.
Stepanek, who co-chaired Trump’s 2016 campaign in New Hampshire and is still close to the president, said the four progressive Democratic members of Congress who have blasted Trump have made racist remarks of their own and have shown themselves to be anti-Semitic.
Trump this week tweeted that the members of Congress should go back to their countries of origin if they are unhappy in the United States. All four of the congresswomen -- U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts – are U.S. citizens and three of them were born in the U.S.
Earlier this week, Gov. Chris Sununu, in an interview with WMUR, declined to comment on Trump’s tweet, instead criticizing the rhetoric coming out of Washington as “toxic and offensive.”
Stepanek, in a separate interview, told New Hampshire Primary Source, “I find it frustrating that the president is jumped on for everything he tweets, but when those congresswomen were making out and out anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli remarks there was no condemnation.
“They have made their own racist remarks against Jewish people, they’ve called Nancy Pelosi a racist, yet nobody criticized them because if you criticize them, you’re a racist.”
Stepanek also criticized the congresswomen for voting against a more than $4 billion humanitarian aid package to address the immigration crisis.
“They went to the border and saw a humanitarian crisis, yet they were the only four who voted against a humanitarian bill to relieve the situation,” Stepanek said. “They had the nerve to go down there and call the ICE agents -- who are doing the best they can with not enough resources – Nazis, and that is wrong.
“At this point, I think it’s overboard, the reaction to the president’s tweets,” Stepanek said. He said that Trump, in his tweets, is “trying to make a point that in fact they’ve got to step up and be part of the solution and not part of the problem.”
