The President's tweets will only make it harder to critique the intolerance of extreme Democrats

President Donald Trump likes to tweet, and when he does, he expresses his opinion in no uncertain terms. On Sunday, he took to his favourite medium of communication to urge a group of four progressive Democratic congresswomen to “go back” to the countries “from which they came”.

Leave aside for a moment the fact that three of the lawmakers are US-born citizens – Representative Rashida Tlaib, for example, was born in Detroit, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Bronx, and Ayanna Pressley in Cincinnati – Trump’s firebrand comments were more than just a below-the-belt assault on his political rivals.

Far worse, they were a betrayal of what it means to be an American and the core belief that in America everyone can enjoy liberty and prosperity regardless of race, creed, religion, or class. America is a country of immigrants. It was founded by travellers and pilgrims from lands far from the New World and is enriched by their diversity to this day.

But Trump’s comments not only derived from a place of moral myopia, they were also strategically short-sighted. While the President clearly hoped to position himself against a far-Left Democrat he can beat in the 2020 election, his Machiavellian approach to politics damages the Republican Party’s credibility among the moderate centre-Right and swing-voters.

A more Reaganite, unifying Republican strategy would play much better with a wide spectrum of supporters – particularly in contrast to an increasingly identity-driven politics of the progressive and socialist wing of the Democratic Party.