michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: In a second day of attacks, President Trump says that four Democratic congresswomen hate the U.S. and are free to leave the country. The congresswomen say they refuse to be silenced. It’s Tuesday, July 16. Julie Davis, where should we begin?

julie hirschfeld davis

So last Wednesday, there was this meeting. It’s the weekly gathering of the House Democratic Caucus. They were there to talk about their legislative agenda, any issues that they need to address as a party, what’s going on that week. And it’s a closed-door meeting. No press is allowed inside, but because it was such a remarkable kind of monologue from Nancy Pelosi, a number of sources who were in the room filled me in on what she said.

michael barbaro

And what does she say?

julie hirschfeld davis

So she basically starts to say things like, some of you are here to make a beautiful pâté, but we’re making sausage most of the time. You know, the process can be ugly. We don’t always get what we want out of it, but, you know, we can’t have our ideal, perfect outcome all the time. And what she’s focused on, what she says House Democrats need to be focused on, is coming out with the best version of what they can get, given that they have just one chamber, the House. And the Senate is controlled by Republicans, and the president is a Republican and obviously wants very different things. She says, don’t play into their hands. Every day some of our members have to fight the fight for their re-election. It’s easy for me in my district, but then she goes on to say, there are some members who are not in that situation. These members, some of these moderate members, actually are the reason that we are in the majority. And so all of the representatives, even if they come from safe Democratic districts, need to be thinking about them.

michael barbaro

What is she saying there?

julie hirschfeld davis

She’s essentially saying, it’s great to be ideologically pure. It’s great to have the energy of the progressive base, but if you’re not going to do things that are going to advance legislation that we can actually kind of deliver on, then it can be detrimental. And she ends her comments with a pretty sharp warning to her members to essentially keep these fights in the family. If they have a problem, she says they should come to her. She says, you got a complaint? You come and talk to me.

michael barbaro

Why is the speaker giving this lecture at this moment? What is she up to?

julie hirschfeld davis

Well, she’s really talking to four members in particular, freshmen members of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York, Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. They’re known as “the squad.” And she’s sort of trying to tamp down on this tension that’s been simmering between her and this group and between, really, the broader Democratic caucus and this group now for many, many days.

michael barbaro

And what are those simmering tensions really about? Where do they start?

julie hirschfeld davis

Well, they start, in many ways, right after the midterm congressional elections, when you had this new crop of women coming in who had a very strong kind of progressive bent. They made it very clear they really wanted to dramatically change the direction of the institution, change the face of the Democratic caucus, and —

archived recording (alexandria ocasio-cortez) I just want to let you all know how proud I am of each and every single one of you.

julie hirschfeld davis

— before the new Congress even convenes right after the midterm congressional elections, some climate protesters stage a sit-in outside of Nancy Pelosi’s office.

archived recording (alexandria ocasio-cortez) We have to get to 100 percent renewable energy in 10 years. There is no other option.

julie hirschfeld davis

And who joins them but the newly elected congresswoman from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, protesting her soon-to-be speaker?

archived recording (alexandria ocasio-cortez) Should Leader Pelosi become the next speaker of the House, we need to tell her that we’ve got her back in showing and pursuing the most progressive energy agenda that this country has ever seen.

julie hirschfeld davis

And it’s this moment where you can see that she is coming to Capitol Hill really as an activist with an agenda to really push things forward in a way that is not your typical member of Congress. She’s not sitting there waiting for her committee assignments. She’s sitting in outside of Nancy Pelosi’s office. But it also then starts to play out over many weeks and months. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the squad all vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker, and they all have some pretty good committee assignments thanks to Nancy Pelosi. They are able to have a seat at the table. But rather than simply acting like most freshmen members of Congress do, where they maybe introduce some legislation here and there, and sort of keep their mouths mostly shut —

archived recording (rashida tlaib) I am so excited — I got to do the [WHOOPING].

julie hirschfeld davis

— they are very active in sort of demanding action on various legislation that they think is not getting enough attention.

archived recording (rashida tlaib) Because we’re going to go in there. We’re going to impeach the [expletive].

julie hirschfeld davis

And they start to make that very clear —

archived recording (ayanna pressley) This is bigger than a funding debate or about any speeches that we give here on the floor of the House of Representatives.

julie hirschfeld davis

— using Twitter and using the activist community that they’re very close to to sort of really start to criticize Pelosi and some of their Democratic colleagues for essentially sort of tiptoeing around what they think should be much bolder policies.

archived recording (ayanna pressley) I learned a long time ago that when change happens, it’s either because people see the light or they feel the fire.

julie hirschfeld davis

Pushing things like the Green New Deal, things like “Medicare for all,” some of these multitrillion-dollar progressive agenda items that are very sort of popular with the base and you see a lot of the Democratic presidential candidates running with them, but realistically, they don’t have much chance of getting off of Capitol Hill. And for the first several months that House Democrats are in control, Pelosi keeps a pretty tight rein on it, and it all seemed to be working out pretty well until a couple weeks ago.

michael barbaro

And what happened then?

archived recording We have gotten our clearest picture yet of the growing crisis at the southern border. Just today —

julie hirschfeld davis

So a couple of weeks ago, there were all these reports of the horrible overcrowding in facilities holding migrants at the border.

archived recording The report shows migrants held in standing-room-only cells for a week at a time while others confined for more than a month in overcrowded rooms.

julie hirschfeld davis

Terrible pictures of subhuman conditions in these places.

archived recording We’re now hearing from a lawyer who visited one center in Texas and a doctor visiting another, describing it as, quote, “torture.”

julie hirschfeld davis

And the administration had been asking for some humanitarian aid funding, and there was an effort to bring a bill to the floor of both the House and the Senate to sort of deal with this. They needed to pass some emergency money and just get it to the border quickly.

michael barbaro

So kind of standard, fund the agencies, fund the facilities — as Pelosi might say, kind of sausage, not pâté.

julie hirschfeld davis

Exactly. And, you know, it was going to be a strictly humanitarian bill. They had already talked about the fact that there wasn’t going to be any wall money, no enforcement money. This was really just supposed to address the humanitarian crisis. And for some members, including the squad, this was seen as sort of a perfect opportunity to really protest the entirety of President Trump’s immigration agenda. And because it was a must-pass bill, because it was, in some ways, seen as so pro forma, it was, in their minds, a perfect vehicle for really registering their antipathy, their discontent with the entire immigration agenda. And in the end, Pelosi is able to pass it with an overwhelming majority. All of the House Democrats, including all of the progressives, vote for it, except for the squad.

michael barbaro

And what does this vote against this bill mean for the conflicts that have been simmering between the squad and Pelosi?

julie hirschfeld davis

Well, it just brings them all to the fore, because what ends up happening is that the House bill that the four of them voted against ends up getting scrapped, and the House has to accept a much weaker bill that the squad hates even more, and that many Democrats hate even more, and that’s where the finger-pointing starts.

archived recording (alexandria ocasio-cortez) We didn’t even bother to negotiate —

julie hirschfeld davis

The squad is really angry about this bill.

archived recording (alexandria ocasio-cortez) — and instead what we’re doing is that we’re immediately going to just saying yes to what got passed out of the Senate.

julie hirschfeld davis

They basically consider it to be selling out to the Trump administration, letting them do what they like, giving them a blank check.

archived recording (rashida tlaib) I will not support anything that is broken and that dehumanizes people, but guess what? Mitch McConnell sent you back something that was worse. It is very disappointing that the speaker would ever try to diminish our voices in so many ways.

julie hirschfeld davis

They are making statements about Nancy Pelosi and how she has mishandled the process.

archived recording (ilhan omar) And I think with the Democratic Party, we’re so busy, oftentimes, trying to appease everyone, we end up appeasing no one.

julie hirschfeld davis

A.O.C.‘s chief of staff tweets that the moderate Democrats who were supportive of this result — he compares them to segregationists, calls them the new Southern Democrats.

michael barbaro

Wow.

julie hirschfeld davis

Yeah, it gets pretty intense. He deletes the tweet, but it’s really ratcheting up. And then you have activists on the left very upset at Pelosi. There’s an article in The Huffington Post saying, what the heck is Nancy Pelosi doing? And it’s in the middle of all of this churn about her and the squad that she sits down with Maureen Dowd —

michael barbaro

Our colleague, an Opinion columnist.

julie hirschfeld davis

— our colleague, right, who asks her about all of this blowback that she’s getting from the squad and from progressives in general about how she’s handled this whole thing. And now this has become more than just about the humanitarian aid bill, but it’s criticism of her whole leadership style and somehow painting her as an apologist for President Trump. What does she think about all of this? And Pelosi basically comes back to what touched this all off, which was this legislation, and says —

archived recording And I quote, “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world, but they didn’t have any following.”

julie hirschfeld davis

Pelosi has this very sort of dismissive way of speaking about people and things. She basically says —

archived recording “They’re four people — ”

julie hirschfeld davis

— but they’re four people —

archived recording ” — and that’s how many votes they got.”

julie hirschfeld davis

— and that’s how many votes they got.

archived recording Ouch! A.O.C. and Ilhan Omar not so happy with Pelosi for that comment, and what are they doing —

julie hirschfeld davis

She’s basically acknowledging that they have a large public following. They’re very active on social media. They’re influential in that way, but in the way that matters to Nancy Pelosi — which is advancing legislation, coming up with a product that can pass — they don’t matter at all, because there are only four of them, and that’s how many votes they control. So after Maureen’s column runs and these comments sort of go viral, there’s an almost immediate response from A.O.C. and the squad, basically clapping back at Pelosi. She tweets, “That public ‘whatever’ is called public sentiment,” directing that toward Pelosi, “and wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country.” So she’s essentially saying, you may dismiss us as nothing but Twitter loudmouths, but that’s the whole game, is getting public opinion to our side so that we can actually make the change that we think needs to happen. It’s not long after that that Pelosi calls this caucus together to basically say, all of this tweeting, all of this sort of public bickering has to stop.

archived recording (nancy pelosi) What I said in the caucus yesterday, we respect the value of every member of our caucus. The diversity of it all is a wonderful thing. Diversity is our strength. Unity is our power. And we have a big fight, and we’re in the arena, and that’s all I’m going to say on this subject. So if you want to waste your —

michael barbaro

And do they take that message to heart?

julie hirschfeld davis

Not entirely. What happens is that A.O.C. clearly felt that she and three other members were being singled out, and she then says to The Washington Post after Pelosi has given her behind-closed-doors lecture that she essentially feels bullied by Pelosi, and why is it that Pelosi feels the need to call out four women of color and target them in this way? And she doesn’t say it outright, but the clear implication is that this is somehow about their race and about the fact that they are women of color who are threatening to her in some way and that the leadership of the Democratic Party is complicit in this as well. And that’s basically where things stand when President Trump decides to send a series of tweets about the squad.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back.

archived recording Moving on to Washington now, where President Trump has sparked a storm of outrage after a series of racist tweets targeting members of Congress who are women of color.

michael barbaro

Julie, tell me about the president’s tweets.

julie hirschfeld davis

So the president wakes up on Sunday morning. He’s at the White House, and he starts tweeting about —

archived recording The president Sunday called out progressive Democrat congresswomen.

julie hirschfeld davis

Quote, unquote, “progressive Democratic congresswomen” —

archived recording Tweeting, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came?”

julie hirschfeld davis

— “who,” he says, “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world.”

archived recording “Now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest, most powerful nation on earth, how our government is to be run.”

julie hirschfeld davis

And he basically says —

archived recording “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came?”

julie hirschfeld davis

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came?” He never mentions A.O.C. or Ilhan Omar or Ayanna Pressley or Rashida Tlaib, only one of whom was not born in the U.S., but he clearly is targeting them. And he ends the series by saying —

archived recording “These places need your help badly. You can’t leave fast enough.”

julie hirschfeld davis

“I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements.” So he’s clearly talking about them and alluding to their kind of rift with the speaker.

michael barbaro

And what do you make of that, that the president, the leader of the Republican Party, decides in the middle of this Democratic battle to send that tweet?

julie hirschfeld davis

Well, I think it’s a couple things. I think that the president is trying to really sort of focus attention on these four Democratic women who he views as extreme, and he thinks most voters, Republican, Democrat or independent, think are outside of the mainstream, and really trying to essentially drive a wedge among Democrats and make it clear that when you say Democratic Party, these are the four people I want you to think about. But I also think that it’s notable that he mentions Pelosi, and he likes the idea that she has these divisions that she has to sort of bridge and that, in some ways, she’s not in control of her caucus. He wants to call attention to the problems he sees Democrats are having rather than, of course, anything to do with him, like his immigration raids that are also unfolding over the weekend, or his labor secretary, who’s just had to resign, or Jeffrey Epstein, who has horrendous charges against him and whose plea deal was worked out by his labor secretary. I mean, there are all sorts of things he would like to distract from, and basically pointing up Democratic divisions and drawing attention to Democratic members of Congress who he considers radical are a much more comfortable place for him to be.

michael barbaro

And did it work? Did this racist trope drive a wedge between the squad and their speaker?

julie hirschfeld davis

No, not at all. They all sort of very quickly came out with statements and tweets.

archived recording (rashida tlaib) This is our country, and no amount of hate-filled bullying from the White House is going to change that. We’re going to fight back together, and we’re going to become stronger for it.

julie hirschfeld davis

The squad reacted directly to him.

archived recording Pressley tweeted back today, quote, “This is what racism looks like. We are what democracy looks like, and we’re not going anywhere, except back to D.C. to fight for the families you marginalize and vilify every day.”

julie hirschfeld davis

Basically saying that he was wrong and they were what America was about. He wasn’t. And so for a news cycle or two, his comments and the reaction that they got and how beyond the pale they were basically shifted the focus away from all of these infighting that had been going on and allowed them to do exactly what Nancy Pelosi had told them last week they should be doing, which is, essentially, don’t direct your fire at inside the party. Direct it at President Trump.

michael barbaro

Right, and I noticed Pelosi came out very quickly and very prominently to defend these lawmakers.

julie hirschfeld davis

Right. She basically says, when he targets them, she said, “he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again.” So it’s her opportunity to really prove what she has been saying privately, which is that she’s not trying to target these women. She’s not trying to take them down. She’s trying to protect her caucus. But also, when it comes to House Democrats, she’s going to defend them against this kind of attack from the president.

michael barbaro

So what do the president’s tweets end up doing to this conflict?

julie hirschfeld davis

It’s kind of a reset button on the whole thing, where instead of talking about their differences, they’re talking about the president and how unacceptable what he has said is and how united they are in pushing back against it. And it’s also kind of a vindication of what Pelosi has said to them privately, which is, if Democrats are divided and making a big public fuss about being divided, that only helps the president. He’s going to take that and run with it, and that is exactly what he’s done.

archived recording (donald trump) I want to welcome everyone to the White House. We’re very excited to be hosting our third-annual “Made in America” showcase.

julie hirschfeld davis

And we saw him just sort of double down on it at the White House.

archived recording Who are you talking about in your tweet about going back to their home — archived recording (donald trump) Well, I don’t mention — I didn’t mention names. And —

julie hirschfeld davis

On Monday, where he just went out at an event about manufacturing and —

archived recording (donald trump) If you’re not happy here, then you can leave.

julie hirschfeld davis

— basically restated everything he said in his tweets, only more so —

archived recording (donald trump) As far as I’m concerned, if you hate our country, if you’re not happy here, you can leave, and that’s what I say all the time. That’s what I said in a tweet, which I guess some people think is controversial. A lot of people love it.

julie hirschfeld davis

— and said that these women hate America. He made all sorts of accusations about not loving their country.

archived recording (donald trump) One of them is polling at 8 percent. One of them is polling at 8 percent.

julie hirschfeld davis

Their polling is in the gutter, he said, and —

michael barbaro

We should point out that all of these claims are unfounded.

julie hirschfeld davis

They’re all unfounded. And again, he’s talking about women, all but one of whom were born in the United States.

archived recording (donald trump) If they’re doing nothing but criticizing us all the time — you see these people walking down, criticizing the United States.

michael barbaro

And he’s suggesting quite inexplicably, quite racially, and quite without any practicality that they would somehow leave the United States.

julie hirschfeld davis

Right. And he’s also making the point that somehow, if you criticize the United States, that you are un-American, that you don’t belong here, and that you need to leave.

archived recording (donald trump) Thank you all very much. Thank you.

michael barbaro

What are these four freshmen supposed to do with the lesson of this moment? It feels like they’re stuck between these two divergent strategies. On the one hand, there’s the Pelosi strategy, which is to say that the squad is not the entire party, that it’s just a small part of the party, and to project a message of moderation that can keep the party’s control over swing districts. Trump’s strategy, on the other hand, is to portray these four House freshmen as absolutely the face of a Democratic Party and to mock them and, by extension, the rest of the party as radical. And so when they’re loud about the policies that they think need attention, the moderates and the party as a whole get branded as something that it’s not. Both of these strategies, the Pelosi strategy and the Trump strategy, punish these lawmakers for being outspoken.

julie hirschfeld davis

I think that it’s a really hard spot for them to be in, because part of why they came to Washington was to be lightning rods. They always have seen that as part of their role, to sort of attract attention, attract conversation, and, by doing so, pull the debate in the direction they think it needs to go in. So you have a speaker who’s saying, keep quiet, keep this within the family, and that’s not what they’re about. And at the same time you have a president who’s essentially confirming what they’re always saying, that he needs to be confronted in an aggressive way, and he needs to be held to account, not in sort of an incremental way, but in a very kind of dramatic way that matches his own tactics.

michael barbaro

And so what do you expect them to do?

julie hirschfeld davis

I think that they’re going to keep being who they are. They’re going to keep being loud and insistent about what they believe needs to happen, because you have President Trump constantly kind of goading them and goading Democrats to essentially go where they naturally are comfortable going, which is to be activists, not really legislators, and to work outside the system rather than within it.

[music]

michael barbaro

Julie, thank you very much.

julie hirschfeld davis

Thank you, Michael.

michael barbaro

On Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for a resolution in the House to condemn the president’s remarks about the four Democratic congresswomen.

archived recording (ayanna pressley) Well, first I want to say thank you to all of you for being here today, and I want to send a message of gratitude and thanks to the solidarity that we have received from every corner of our country.

michael barbaro

A few hours later, during a joint news conference in the Capitol, Representatives Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar and Tlaib denounced the president’s attack on them, calling it an attempt to disrupt and distract from their agenda.

archived recording (ayanna pressley) Despite the occupant of the White House attempts to marginalize us and to silence us, please know that we are more than four people. Our squad is big. Our squad includes any person committed to building a more equitable and just world. And given the size of this squad and this great nation, we cannot, we will not be silenced.

michael barbaro