Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser is taking aim at U.S. President Donald Trump for his continuous rants at four Democratic, progressive congresswomen of color by calling him the “face of racism.”
“It troubles me that the most important political office in the world is becoming the face of racism and exclusion,” said Kaeser in a Twitter post in German on Saturday. “I lived for many years in the USA and experienced freedom, tolerance, and openness as never before. That was ‘America Great at work’!!”
Siemens, a perennial on the Fortune 500, manufactures wind and gas turbines and generators within the U.S.
Kaeser’s tweet was in response to a tweet by Ruprecht Polenz, a former German conservative politician who wrote an article about Trump’s rally last week in Greenville, N.C. When Trump was critical of Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the crowd began chanting: “send her back.” Omar was born in war-torn Somalia and fled to the U.S. with her family 20 years ago. She became a U.S. citizen when she was a teenager.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday that he “was not happy” with the chants. By Friday, he seemingly walked back those comments and defended those attending Wednesday’s rally, saying they are “incredible patriots.”
Omar, and her three colleagues, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, called out Trump last week for his tweets that included telling them to “go back” to their countries.
His comments were denounced by several of his Democratic challengers for president, some Republicans and world leaders, including British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling it “hurtful, wrong and completely unacceptable.”
On Monday, Trump was back escalating his attacks against the congresswomen, this time tweeting they are racist.
“The ‘Squad’ is a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart,” Trump tweeted. “They are pulling the once great Democrat Party far left, and were against humanitarian aid at the Border…And are now against ICE and Homeland Security. So bad for our Country!”
Also, during a briefing with reporters at the White House, Trump dug in further saying he thinks the congresswomen “are bad for our country.”
“I really think they must hate our country. What they’ve said about Israel, what they’ve said about our country, or when they talk about disgusting people,” Trump said. “When they talk about the way they talk. When the one mentioned that brown people should speak for brown people and Muslim people should speak for Muslim people. And you when you hear all of this, that’s not what our country is all about.”
Earlier Monday, Tlaib told attendees at the NAACP Convention in Detroit that “I’m not going nowhere. Not until I impeach this president. It’s beyond just the four of us. ‘The Squad’ is all of you.”
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