A Republican-run social media account is coming under fire for what critics are calling a “vile” and “racist” attack on a U.S. lawmaker this week.
After Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) delivered the Spanish-language rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress, the National Republican Congressional Committee slammed him as an “illegal immigrant.”
Espaillat and his family came to the United States from the Dominican Republic roughly 60 years ago, when he was a child. They overstayed their tourist visas, making them undocumented, but obtained green cards within a year.
He has been a U.S. citizen for more than 40 years, and in 2016 became the first formerly undocumented immigrant elected to Congress.
But the NRCC slammed his response to the speech not for what he said, but for what he once was, briefly, as a child decades ago.
“Democrats literally chose an illegal immigrant to give their response to President Trump’s address,” the organization wrote on X. “Predictably, this radical called Trump’s presidency a ‘reign of terror.’ Democrats couldn’t be more disconnected from the American people”
It’s not clear who wrote the tweet, but the organization is chaired by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.).
Critics ― including many of Espaillat’s colleagues ― fired back at the NRCC in his defense:
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