U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he is “enjoying” the ongoing fight created by racist remarks he made on Twitter in which he told four Democratic congresswomen of colour to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
“I’m not relishing in the fight, I’m enjoying it because I have to get the word out to the American people,” he said. “And you have to enjoy what you do.
“I enjoy what I do.”
His tweets have garnered condemnation from members of both the Democratic and Republican parties and several world leaders.
WATCH: Trump says Republicans, himself being treated ‘unfairly’
The president made the remarks Wednesday as he departed the White House for a rally in North Carolina.
Trump has vehemently denied the tweets were racist and once again doubled down on the comments.
“If people want to leave our country, if they don’t want to love our country, if they don’t want to fight for our country, they can,” he told reporters. “I’ll never change on that.”
Trump then pointed the finger back at the Democratic congresswomen, claiming that they have said “unthinkable things,” adding that he thinks he’s “winning the political fight.”
“I think that they are not espousing the views of our country, the four congresswomen.” he said. “I think that they’ve said horrible things that the press doesn’t cover.”
WATCH: Trump fires back: “I don’t have a racist bone in my body!”
At a press conference Monday afternoon, the four Democratic congresswomen, Minn. Rep. Ilhan Omar, N.Y. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mass. Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Mich. Rep Rashida Tlaib, known as ‘The Squad,’ hit back at Trump, saying the attack was an attempt to distract from what they say are “hateful” and “dangerous” policies from his administration.
“This is a president who has openly violated the very values our country aspires to uphold,” Omar said. “Equality under the law, religious liberty, equal protection and protection from persecution. And to distract from that, he’s launching a blatantly racist attack on four duly elected members of the United States house of representatives, all of who are women of colour.”
WATCH: ‘The Squad’ responds to Donald Trump’s attacks in joint interview on Capitol Hill
Ocasio-Cortez said the attacks are a ploy Trump uses instead of defending his administration’s policy.
“Weak minds and leaders challenge loyalty to our country to avoid challenging and debating the policy,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “This president does not know how to make the argument that Americans do not deserve healthcare, he does not know how to defend his policies, so what he does is attack us personally. And that is what this is all about.”
On Tuesday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on a resolution to condemn the Twitter attack as racist.
Democrats muscled the resolution through the chamber by a vote of 240-187 over strong GOP opposition.
WATCH: Pelosi calls Trump’s remarks ‘inappropriate’ and ‘disgusting’
The rebuke was an embarrassing one for Trump, and he had appealed to GOP lawmakers not to go along, but there were four Republican votes for the resolution.
However, four Republican members — moderate representatives Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Fred Upton of Michigan, Will Hurd of Texas and Susan Brooks of Indiana, who is retiring — voted to condemn the president’s tweets.
Also backing the measure was Michigan’s independent representative Justin Amash, who left the GOP this month after becoming the party’s sole member of Congress to back a Trump impeachment inquiry.
Despite the condemnation, Trump chose to take an optimistic view of the vote.
“So great to see how unified the Republican Party was on today’s vote concerning statements I made about four Democrat Congresswomen,” he tweeted Tuesday evening. “The Republican vote was 187-4. Wow!”
“Quite a day,” he wrote.
Hours before Trump’s rally on Wednesday, the House voted to kill an effort by Democrat Texas Rep. Al Green’s to impeach Trump for the tweets.
The chamber killed the measure 332-95.
— With files from the Associated Press
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