Watching the four-woman “squad” respond to President Trump’s already famous Tweets urging “progressive” Democrats to “go back” to their “original countries,” one wonders why Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts would want to be lumped in with the other three.

Pressley’s remarks were standard-issue liberal, but restrained and dignified in the face of Trump's out-of-bounds comments. The other three Democrats handled the situation very differently, combining mendacity, smears, and radicalism in ways with which Pressley should not want to be associated.

Pressley never even used the words “racist” or “racism.” Using the words correctly, she accused Trump of making remarks that were “xenophobic and bigoted.” That’s a far cry from, and much more defensible than, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota accusing Trump of “white supremacy” and of an agenda of a “white nationalist.”

Omar also repeated the accusation, without a shred of proof, that children detained at the U.S.-Mexican border are being forced to drink water from toilets. She repeated, against all known proof so far, that there is “credible” evidence that Trump “colluded” illegally with a foreign country. And, without offering a single example of Trump having committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” she called for the president to be impeached. All of those claims or suggestions are completely without foundation.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan also called for impeachment. Like Omar, Tlaib offered no specific allegation that would amount to an impeachable offense. This is irresponsible. The impeachment-and-removal process is serious business. General obnoxiousness, of which Trump is certainly guilty, is far from an ordinarily acceptable reason for removal from office.

Then there was the noted publicity hound Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who throws around balderdash like a toddler throwing strained peas. Not content to blast the president alone, she accused his secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, of working with Trump to turn the nation’s education system into a corrupt “cash cow” for their own enrichment. That’s slander, pure and simple. She also accused Trump of believing that Americans do not deserve healthcare. This is, well, risible.

All in all, even when appearing to try to keep their remarks somewhat restrained, Reps. Tlaib, Omar, and Ocasio-Cortez showed why their radicalism has made them deeply unpopular with the American public. That’s all the more reason for Pressley, who even in pointed remarks still stayed within ordinary bounds of civil discourse, to speak on her own without associating herself with the three rabble-rousers.