MADISON - Just one prominent Wisconsin Republican lawmaker has said anything about the president's suggestion to Democratic congresswomen who are not white to go back to "crime infested places from which they came."

In a state that has held the distinctions of being the worst for black children to live and having the most segregated areas in America, its most powerful lawmakers said little when the leader of their party used a notorious racist trope intended to make Americans who aren't white feel like outsiders.

But they weren't alone. Just a handful of Republicans nationally reacted to Trump's criticism, which insinuated because the congresswomen are not white they don't deserve to stay in the U.S. if they criticize the president — even though three were born here and all four are citizens.

U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Republican who represents Wisconsin's 8th Congressional District, was one — calling the tweets "wrong" and said the president was "mean tweeting."

Trump in a series of tweets Sunday said the congresswomen "originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world" and should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came" if they continue to condemn U.S. government policies.

The freshman congresswomen — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — have heavily criticized the president, especially over the conditions at facilities used to detain migrants at the U.S. border with Mexico.

Omar was born in Somalia and the rest were born in the U.S.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sunday reached out to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, the state's five Republican congressmen and four Republican legislative leaders seeking reaction to the president's comments. Just one responded by midday Monday and another tweeted about one of the congresswomen.

"This week we will be voting on an intelligence authorization bill and a minimum wage bill on the House floor, but the only questions we will get asked, the only questions that will be debated on TV and social media, will be about tweets we can all agree were wrong," Gallagher said in a statement. "Instead of mean tweeting, let’s do our job and work to fix the looming budget crisis, a broken healthcare system, and a broken immigration system.”

U.S. Rep Sean Duffy, who represents Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District, didn't directly comment on Trump's tweets but criticized Omar on Monday and suggested schools and universities are teaching American students not to love the United States.

"The immigrants I know, including my mother-in-law, are the people most disgusted by Rep. Omar's ingratitude to the nation who rescued her family from an African refugee camp and gave her the equivalent of a lottery ticket to come to the USA," he said. "We must do a better job as a country and as parents of teaching civics and patriotism to our children."

Gallagher's Democratic opponent, state Rep. Amanda Stuck, said, "it's unfortunate that the president is dividing Americans instead of focusing on the many things that Wisconsin needs, like lower prescription drug prices, access to affordable health care and an infrastructure plan."

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Republicans nationally have largely avoided speaking against or in favor of the president's comments, though many had pushed back against the president just days before but over his criticism of former House Speaker Paul Ryan of Janesville.

By Monday afternoon, a handful of Republicans in Washington had weighed in — most unhappy with the president.

The most prominent was South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who focused on the congresswomen — specifically Omar, who has come under fire from Republicans and her own party for criticizing Israel and for saying supporters of Israel seek "allegiance to a foreign country," an anti-Semitic trope.

"We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists,” Graham said on Fox News' morning television show "Fox & Friends. "They hate Israel. They hate our own country ... Don’t get down — aim higher. We don’t need to know anything about them personally. Talk about their policies.”

Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called the silence from most Republicans "surprising and puzzling."

"I would expect members of Congress, in particular, to stand up for their colleagues in the Legislature who are being belittled by President Trump," he said.

'A penchant for going after people of color'

Burden noted Trump's recent tweets are the latest of many derogatory comments about public figures who criticize him that are not white.

"He has a particular penchant for going after people of color and accusing them of being incompetent and unpatriotic," Burden said.

The president before being elected questioned whether former President Barack Obama was lying about being born in the U.S. and in 2016 said a federal judge who is Hispanic and born in Indiana could not rule impartially because he was Mexican — a comment Ryan called "the textbook definition of a racist comment."

"One difference between now and then is that Trump was merely a candidate when he insulted Judge (Gonzalo) Curiel," Burden said. "As president, Trump has remade the party and fellow Republicans are now extremely timid about criticizing him."

Trump on Monday said his comments weren't racist and accused Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of making racist remarks when she characterized Trump's campaign motto as actually being about "making America white again.”

"If somebody has a problem with our country, if somebody doesn’t want to be in our country, they should leave," he told a CNN reporter at the White House.

In a tweet defending his comments, Trump said "We will never be a Socialist or Communist Country. IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY HERE, YOU CAN LEAVE! It is your choice, and your choice alone. This is about love for America.

The suggestion to nonwhite Americans to "go back" to where they came from has been used since the country first experienced diversity, especially in times of high racial anxiety, said UW-Madison journalism and mass communications professor Hemant Shah, who specializes in portrayals of race and ethnicity in journalism and entertainment media.

"It's a normalization of what this administration has been doing all along in terms of creating insiders and outsiders," Shah said about Republicans' decision not to comment. "If you’re white and have certain political values, you're in, and if you’re not, you’re an enemy or you’re on the outside."

Shah, who was born in India and moved to the U.S. when he was 5 in 1962, said the last time he heard such comments was shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when a carload of teenagers yelled out of the window, "Go back to Arabia."

"We’ve steeled ourselves from that but when you hear it from the highest ranking officials in our government and their comments get circulated very widely and broadly … it does have an impact," he said. "It varies across the board from sadness all the way to fear."

Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is black, said at one point most black Americans — including him — have been told to "go back to Africa."

"The more he gets away with, the more he'll say and that's the problem," Barnes said. "I don't expect Wisconsin Republicans to challenge him because they've never challenged him on anything before. It's a signal that there's a comfort with it."

Democratic U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore of Milwaukee — the only member of Congress from Wisconsin who is black — said of Trump, "these vile comments go beyond dog-whistling."

"It's bad for a bigot to hold any form of power, but it's outright dangerous to have a racist PRESIDENT," Moore tweeted. "This will place people in greater danger. This will hurt people. This will cost lives."

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The Journal Sentinel reached out to Johnson, U.S. Reps. Sean Duffy, Glenn Grothman, Jim Sensenbrenner and Bryan Steil; Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, Senate President Roger Roth and Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke.

Wisconsin's Republican congressmen may have to go on record about the tweets. Pelosi and House Democrats are considering a resolution condemning them. In a letter to colleagues, Pelosi said, "Our Republican colleagues must join us in condemning the President’s xenophobic tweets."

Shah said he doesn't believe lawmakers staying mum are doing so because they agree with the president.

"They don’t want to take a position against Trump because they can do a lot of damage to their electoral chances when they run. That's my positive spin," Shah said. "My negative view is, well, Ron Johnson is an old school, traditional white guy from Wisconsin and that's how he thinks. But I don't think that's true. I think it's a political calculation."

Contact Molly Beck at molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.