The Daily - The Freshmen: Rashida Tlaib, Part 2
Episode Date: May 14, 2019When we last spoke with Representative Rashida Tlaib, she had just been sworn in — and had fulfilled the fears of Democratic leaders by calling for the impeachment of President Trump. In the months ...since, she’s been challenging her party on a different front, attracting controversy for her criticisms of Israel, which some have characterized as anti-Semitic.Ms. Tlaib has repeatedly denied that there’s any anti-Semitism behind what she’s said. But she hasn’t spoken at length about the controversy or explained where she’s coming from. So a few weeks ago, we traveled back to visit her at her congressional office in Detroit.Guests: Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan; and Andy Mills and Jessica Cheung, producers for “The Daily.” For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. This episode contains explicit language.Background reading:Remarks by Ms. Tlaib about the Palestinian role in the founding of Israel further inflamed a feud over the Jewish state, anti-Semitism and the first two Muslim women in the House.This episode of “The Daily” includes excerpts from an interview with Ms. Tlaib on “Skullduggery,” a podcast from Yahoo News. Listen to the full interview here.
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And when your son looks at you and says,
Mama, look, you won, bullies don't win.
And I say, baby, they don't, because we're going to go in there,
we're going to impeach the motherfucker.
A freshman Democrat from Michigan using vile language in public
to call for the impeachment of President Trump.
Well, you know, she said on Twitter, I'm unapologetically me.
I'm not going to say I'm sorry, and I'm not going to change.
You cannot accomplish very much of anything unless you have civility. You know,
I have a little bit of a potty mouth, but at the same time, it's more because of my passion and
just this fire that's in me constantly about fighting for justice. Do you really think that you can stay like this? I can.
Just a few days after her exploitive, laden vow to impeach President Trump, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib's choice of words is making headlines again.
had just fulfilled the fears of Democratic leaders that she, along with a handful of other progressive House freshmen,
were going to push the party to places it didn't want to go.
Tlaib recently said that members of Congress who support Israel
forgot what country they represent.
Since then.
The suggestion that someone may be more loyal to Israel than their home country
is said to be a longstanding anti-Semitic attack.
It's only gotten more intense.
This is a reprehensible charge of dual loyalty,
utterly unbefitting of a sitting member of Congress.
In less than five months in office,
Tlaib has made comments on the motivations of people who support Israel.
Both Congressman Omar as well as Rashida Tlaib,
who's also made problematic statements,
both of whom back a boycott of the Jewish state.
That have raised accusations that she herself is anti-Semitic.
Think about it. This is a diverse class. They've never had two Muslim women. They've never had a
Palestinian American. They've never had a woman that was a refugee. I mean, these are real life,
impactful stories that come with us because our lens is so different.
Tlaib has repeatedly denied that there's any anti-Semitism behind what she said.
Hey, how are you?
How are you guys meeting with...
Good, good.
The congresswoman?
Yeah, I'm Michael Barbaro.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
But she hasn't really spoken at length about the controversy or explained where she's coming from.
Hi, Michael.
Hi, Michael.
How's it going?
Hi, Jess.
So a few weeks ago, we traveled back to visit her.
I do not miss this, by the way.
You don't miss what?
Oh, miss the interviews.
At her congressional office in Detroit.
It's Tuesday, May 14th.
Yeah, you'll be surprised.
I get a lot of requests.
I say no.
But I felt like I'm committed to you all, and I'll continue.
Thank you.
So I want to actually go back to the beginning.
Where does the Rashida Tlaib story start?
to actually go back to the beginning. Where does the Rashida Tlaib story start?
It starts with the Palestinian mother flying from Palestine to the United States.
She believed she was pregnant with me on the airplane ride here. And the math does add up.
And what is it like to grow up in the Tlaib house? Well, at that time, it was the Elevette home.
That was my maiden name.
But, I mean, growing up in my home, you know, I don't think I remember my mother not pregnant.
I'm the eldest of 14.
We were always—we knew we were different.
You know, my mom, she still couldn't speak very good English.
She's picking up stuff, learning stuff. But when I started school, I didn't speak English at all. I remember my mom walking me to school because she didn't learn how to drive or anything, but we'd walk to school every day. She dropped me off at kindergarten. And I was probably my mom's translator until I was about 12 years old. It was funny. I remember specifically as a child being a Sears counter,
where Sears used to exist. And my mom wanted me to ask the cashier something. And at that moment
when the cashier was like, I don't understand. Why doesn't she just learn English? I said,
ma'am, do you even see, and I raised my voice, do you even see that I'm not translating what
you're saying to her? I'm only translating what she's saying to you because she understands what
you're saying right now. And the woman's like, oh, I said, yeah, because of her broken
English, she gets yelled at, people raise their voice, and they disrespect her. So she doesn't
like to speak it because of the way people treat her. And I remember walking away,
my mother just like pinching me and saying, I can never come back to this serious store again.
And I was like, it wasn't that bad.
And she's like, oh, my God, did you see how—
And also kind of embarrassed her a little bit.
I always stand up for my mom.
Even to this day, I'm constantly—you know, she's the one that's like,
shh, you don't have to do—no, no, don't say anything.
It's okay. It's okay.
And I'm like, did you see how he's staring at you because you wear the hijab?
Mama, he said—she goes, shh, no, no, no, it's okay.
Get back in the car.
But I've always been that person.
What's the story that they told you about why they came to the U.S.?
I know for my mother, it was about getting out of poverty.
She talked about that.
The fact that she, you know, felt what was happening with the occupation.
There was so much already happening there that for my mother, it was an out.
It's interesting because I don't think my mother believed there was poverty here.
She didn't.
I don't think she realized how hard it was here.
We used to go to Focus Hope and get food, like dry beans, all the nasty powdered eggs.
Like I didn't know all that stuff was like food assistance or anything growing up.
I mean, I didn't really know I was poor probably until I was maybe in sixth grade.
I started wanting certain things, and we just didn't have the money for it.
What was it like to be the oldest of 14 children?
I was like the third parent.
I was very much overly responsible, constantly taking care.
I mean, my mother didn't understand homework, so helping my brothers and sisters with the homework.
I didn't want them to struggle the way I did.
I, at one point, was the one who made dinner all the time.
And until everybody went to bed, I got to my homework and did my own homework.
And sometimes stayed until 2 o'clock in the morning to get, you know, papers done. And I was the one
that people called to help. So it sounds like between you and your mother are doing a lot of
the parenting, right? Yeah. That's the portrait you're outlining. Yeah. My dad, I mean, my dad
was always, I always remember him just working because he worked the night shift. And so during the day he slept. And he was also really tough on us, like my way or the highway. And I can tell you even being around him, we kind of held our breath sometimes.
our breath sometimes. And then when he was gone, I was like, okay. Because he constantly did not want us to have the same challenges and same issues that he did growing up. And he just always
was very, always hard on us. Every time we would complain as kids, just even raking leaves,
he's like, let me tell you something.
When I was seven years old, I was in Jerusalem, and I would have to carry people's groceries on my back for just a little bit, like pennies.
You have nothing to complain about.
What comes to mind when you think about your father and the values that he talked about and tried to impose on you.
You know, one time I had a conversation with him,
and I was like, you're so tough.
You know, he was the person that if you got, like, pushed around,
push back, that kind of person.
You don't let anybody push you around.
You don't let anybody tell you you don't belong.
You don't let anybody tell you that you can't do something.
He just died a year ago. I don't know why he doesn't talk. Do we have to talk about my dad?
I kind of don't want to.
Yes, ma'am.
Okay.
I mean, look how I turned out.
I turned out pretty tough.
You can give my dad credit for that.
He was the kind of person that, honestly, like, anybody pick on us, even on the block, they're like, I'm telling my dad.
And people are just afraid of him.
He was just really tough. I'm sorry that we upset you earlier.
Oh, it's okay.
This is a complex family.
But I think it actually, it's a very complex family, so.
What kind of cultural gap is opening up between you and your parents at this point?
I think a lot of the cultural gap was about girls my age and what they could or could not do.
You know, it's like your school, come home, you got your chores, you got things to do.
But I do feel like being born a girl in an Arab household did have these kind of cultural
expectations of me.
Those expectations?
You know, no boyfriends.
Girls don't curse.
I started cursing very young.
Most teenagers find a way to rebel.
And knowing what I know about you, I have to imagine that you are rebellious.
rebel. And knowing what I know about you, I have to imagine that you are rebellious. When did you start to become someone who was rebelling against your parents and your family?
I mean, probably when I was 15.
What happened then?
I just, I got sick of the nose. And so I was like, yeah.
What were the nose?
Nose, it's going on certain trips or being involved in certain activities at school and this, you know, this is to protect you, you know.
And so I pushed up against that.
I mean, it was huge fights, explosive fights.
When you're having conflicts with your parents at this age, so maybe middle school, high school, what are those conflicts?
I mean, like the senior trip, prom, things like that.
It's like, what's that?
Those are the difficulties of, you know, being a child of immigrants and them truly not
understanding like, you know, this is, and did I really truly needed all those things? I don't know,
but I didn't want to be left out of all the celebrations and things like that.
So I got to go to prom, but I had to take my brother.
You couldn't take a date?
No.
Because a date doesn't represent what?
No.
We couldn't have boyfriends.
You couldn't have a boyfriend?
You're a senior in high school.
Oh, no.
There was no boyfriends?
Are you serious?
I got married at 21.
Because at one point, the no's just got so frustrating and got to the point where, I
mean, as I got older, more womanly, I guess, I don't know. But my dad and my mom were like, it was lockdown.
It was school and home.
And it wasn't, you know, I wanted to go on trips.
I wanted to possibly study abroad.
And all that wasn't going to be possible.
And then I remember meeting this guy, my future husband, super quiet, shy, super sweet.
And I jokingly said, I was like, I got married. I needed
to get, and he goes, you're using me. And it's like, we were very much in love.
You can't yada, yada, yada your way through marriage. So my question is,
was it kind of escape from a certain kind of childhood?
And my husband at that time, we were, fiancé, he wanted to stay engaged longer.
And I was the one like, no, we need to get married.
Because it meant you could leave the house.
I could leave, but I also told him even dating would be a problem.
You know, any of that would have been like this constant struggle with him.
It was overly protective.
I think they didn't know any way of being parents.
We'll be right back. How much a part of your childhood was your Muslim identity?
How big a part of your life was that? I mean, I grew up more Palestinian than Muslim or even Arab.
I mean, I think being Palestinian, especially in the 80s and 90s
and everything that was happening,
it's like constantly in the news,
it was constantly, you know,
topic of conversation at gatherings.
You know, people, we would be in settings
where I'm like, they're like, oh, I'm 1948.
In 1948, he was displaced and he had to leave.
He went to creation in Israel.
Or, oh, I'm 67.
You know, so displaced in 1967.
Yeah.
And so all of that was so, you know, as a young child, like you can hear,
and these are people that you're interacting with at weddings and gatherings and things like that.
And so with that in mind, what's the story that you are absorbing about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?
You're hearing bits and pieces of it, but by the time you're in high school, what's the story, as you understand it, of the conflict?
Well, I mean, so I went to a predominantly black high school.
And it was the first year that Detroit public schools started requiring African-American history.
And I remember we got these, I want to say they were orange, brand new books. And they're all talking about segregation, some of the most
oppressive times of Black Americans in our country, all this stuff. And as they were talking,
there were so many similarities of what I saw as a 12-year-old with my mom. I remember we were
going for my uncle's wedding.
In the Palestinian territories?
Yeah. Even at the airport, how we were treated there, to, you know, segregated lines, to even when we were trying to go to my grandfather's house, we had to go through maybe, I don't know
what you want to call it, Israel or, I don't know how, where it was at that moment. I was 12,
but I know we had to go through a checkpoint. There was two different color license plate, yellow and blue. So if you had
blue license plate, you couldn't travel in certain areas or something. So it was very segregated.
And then for me, that connectivity of what African-American struggle went through with
segregation and oppression and equality, like the fact that you're born here, but you're not equal because of the color of your skin.
And so thinking about my grandmother who was born there,
but doesn't have equality, is treated less than.
As a Palestinian.
As a Palestinian, yeah.
So much of that is connected
to growing up in the city of Detroit,
to seeing what's happening to my ancestors in Palestine.
There's so much connectivity
and that's how I see it. What was the basic story that your mom and dad, having come from
the Palestinian territories, that they told you about what had happened?
Growing up, my dad, for him, it's like our land was taken. We were uprooted. It was about power and about struggle. And then I started seeking it out
myself. I think even starting with what happened in the Holocaust and how that led to the movement
of creating a Jewish state, right? All that part wasn't really explained, right? This sense of
safe haven. It almost gave you a little bit of peace of like, okay, all right, I get it, all right.
of safe haven. It almost gave you a little bit of peace of like, okay, all right, I get it,
all right. But then how do you equate that as like, was it really truly okay then to completely displace a whole people? To take away everything that they know, their way of life,
their land, all of that. You were in law school when 9-11 happened.
And can you tell me about that?
I was taking weekend classes.
I can't remember what,
I knew it was during the week
that it happened.
It was a weekday
because I worked full time.
I was the executive assistant
to the largest
Arab American Human Services Agency
in the country, ACCESS.
And that morning,
it was like maybe between 8 or 9 in the morning.
People were in the lunchroom, very small, very, very small room.
I didn't know what was going on.
But then I heard gasps, and then I ran, and I saw a couple of my colleagues crying.
I was like, oh, my God, what's happening?
Like, oh my God, what's happening?
We started seeing these images.
And then we can hear, like, the screams from the TV.
We all started crying.
And I was like, oh my God.
And then, not even within, like, an hour or two,
we had to stop mourning because we started getting calls of, threatening calls.
Our executive director was driving in,
and some young people showed up and started throwing bottles.
At that moment, it became very real that being Muslim in America was going to be completely different.
My sister, who was in, I think, third grade, Layla,
came home upset and saying that somebody in her class, because the teacher asked if anybody had any questions, and somebody in her class raised their hand and said, does this mean we have to kill Layla?
Wow.
And then my other brother, somebody called the 800 number on him, and sure enough, the FBI showed up at his home.
somebody called the 800 number on him. And sure enough, the FBI showed up at his home.
People probably don't remember, but after 9-11, they kept putting this 800 number up and say,
call if you have any suspicious person. So they called on him. I don't know. I mean, you got to meet with Rashad. He was kind of a punk kid back then and just partied like everybody
else and always worried that he wasn't going to class. I constantly called him.
And then my parents were interviewed by the FBI.
It was horrifying because when they showed up to my mom's house, they surrounded the house.
Like it was a military operation with, you know, big guns and everything.
My sister was so little and she's like, Mama, what's all that?
And they're all around the house and came barging in and scared the shit out of my mom. They spent the most time with my father.
They went from the first time my dad came to the country and went through every single thing. They
already knew all the answers. And my dad stayed calm and didn't, you know, he looked tired after
it was done. My mother was confused constantly.
They kept showing her pictures, whether you know this person or not.
She goes, I don't know.
They all look alike.
I think I saw them on TV.
Like, I don't know.
My mom was awful.
And yeah.
How did that make you feel?
Helpless.
I literally told my mom, put me on speaker.
I don't know where I was.
I wasn't, I was not in town.
And I kept telling her, don't know where I was. I wasn't, I was not in town. And I kept telling her, don't guess,
don't guess, you know, trying to teach my mom that it's okay if you don't know.
And they could see that.
She didn't accidentally say something that would get her in trouble.
No, that, or she felt like she needed to identify. That's what they wanted her to do.
She was, I feel like they want me to choose her. I said, don't. Have you ever met any of them? No,
like they want me to choose. I said, don't. Have you ever met any of them? No. That's what you say.
Obviously, they weren't detained or charged with any kind of anything, but it was horrifying.
There was so much happening all at once. People getting knocks on their door from the FBI,
not knowing what to do, detainment at the airport. It was so much all at once.
And then I decided to do policy work at that moment.
And my dad, who is probably the more politically active,
you know, when I turned 18, he literally said,
go register to vote.
He was all about that.
And he, you know, I said,
Bob, I'm going to run for state representative.
And he said, who's going to vote for you after?
You're Arab.
Who's going to vote for you after 9-11?
Yeah, my mom, though.
I mean, she's like, does this mean you're not going to have any more kids?
My mother is very focused.
Yeah. I wonder if you think it's ironic that you've now become the most visible,
in a way, most visible Muslim woman in America, if you see an irony here. You grow up rebelling
against a certain set of expectations about what it means to be an Arab woman, and now you're one of the most visible Arab women in the country.
Is that a bit ironic?
Sure, it is.
But probably but for the fact that I'm this way,
maybe I would have never, I never reached where I'm at now.
Maybe if I kept listening to my father saying
no one's going to vote for me
maybe if I kept listening to my mother saying
you know, have another baby
I would never probably have been able to
serve not only in the Michigan legislature
but now in the United States Congress.
You spoke this week at a law school.
Yeah.
And you said, I'm more Palestinian in Congress than I am anywhere in the country or in the world.
Can you talk more
about that? What does that mean? I say that more and more often. I've been to Palestine.
I'm the Merkaniya there, which means like the American girl. And here in Detroit, I'm just
Detroiter. I'm Rashida from Southwest, or you're the girl from Southwest. I have never felt so
Palestinian than I did in Congress.
To so many, I'm just that.
That's how they identified me as.
More even so than being Muslim.
And why do you think that is?
I think this issue around Palestine and Israel is strong.
It's stronger than I ever thought it was.
I mean, I knew that obviously it's a huge conflict.
It's a continued challenge.
There's so much disagreements between those on the inside and the institution and those
on the outside.
I know that much because I've been on the outside looking in and saying, yo, it's so
unbalanced.
Why aren't you talking about policy and human rights?
And why aren't you talking about both sides, not just one?
aren't you talking about Palestinian human rights? And why aren't you talking about both sides,
not just one? I think I was naive thinking that me being there might have been this value for the caucus of like, wow, this is incredible. We have a member of Congress who has a living
grandmother in the West Bank, in the occupied territories in Palestine. What a tremendous
opportunity. Use me as a source of information. But not only that,
you might be able to see a side to this issue that might actually lead us to peace.
I want to engage this because I think it's really important when it comes to the subject of Israel
and defending the Palestinian cause. And it's you and Ilhan Omar who are the focus of this
because you've been bringing the party, both of you,
into a conversation that it's not entirely comfortable having
about the U.S. relationship with Israel and with the Palestinian issue.
You are progressive, quite progressive, and you are proudly Muslim.
And correct me if you feel I'm wrong.
It feels like these two things have kind of collided.
It did.
So how do you think about that when you think about the kind of two parts of your identity?
I mean, at the time, you know, when I talk about these issues, I talk about the values.
I don't talk about based on my identity, but I talk about values.
but I talk about values.
Ilhan Omar and I have been very consistent that Palestinians deserve equality, justice, human dignity.
By even saying that alone, being who we are,
is somehow more charged than somebody else that would say it.
But if you hear us talking about comprehensive immigration reform
and children not being caged at the border,
it's the same values as when we say Palestinians don't deserve to be detained in Israeli prisons.
So something about your identity elevates it when you say it or when Ilhan Omar says it.
I don't. We're still taken aback by it.
The fact that we can say certain things,
and you would think that people say,
of course, her grandmother's in Palestine.
Of course she's going to say that.
Why wouldn't she?
It's more of like, hmm, she must be anti-Semitic.
I feel like those two things are completely,
you said, we're just talking about our values,
not our identities.
And then you just said,
well, we've got to take into account my identity.
I've got a grandmother in Palestine.
I don't know if you can have it both ways.
Do you think that it's some mix of—
I understand that.
I understand.
I'm just telling you all, like, for me, I'm very proud Palestinian.
I don't even shy away from it.
But when I say certain things, obviously it's different layers in there
because it's rooted in racism.
It's rooted in the fact that I'm a brown Arab
Muslim saying Palestinians should be free. I don't know if any of my other colleagues could
say that without, you know, with them getting maybe targeted. They might get targeted. And I
heard that some of them have in the past. This is in a different scale when it comes to Ilhan Omar,
especially going after her, policing her words, policing everything she does.
It is a way to discredit her voice.
It's a way to discredit who she is.
And they're using her identity in many ways to make her words maybe weighed less than.
What do you make of that charge?
You used that word, anti-Semitism.
What do you make of that charge?
It's generally been leveled more at Ilhan Omar, but also you.
Yeah.
I mean, it's painful when people say it.
At first, I didn't kind of believe.
I was like, it's probably just a few claims.
And then people started writing about it, and it started becoming this, like, is this a possibility?
And I was like, absolutely not. It is absurd because I am
criticizing state of Israel, just like I do my own country sometimes. It is so that we can promote
equality and justice and so forth. There's nothing anti-Semitic about it.
So what do you make of it? If you try really hard to put yourself...
I can't guess what they're saying, Michael. Michael, you're asking me to read their minds. I can't read their minds. I cannot.
I don't know what it is. We think Rashida is dog whistling. Oh, boy. I'm asking you if you can put
yourself in the heads of people who say, here is a very sophisticated person who seems to understand when the other side is communicating something very particular and subtly, and they may think, they do think, she's doing that here.
Ilhan Omar's doing that here too.
They're saying this about Bibi Netanyahu.
They're saying this.
They're talking about dual loyalty.
They're using this language in a tweet. Do you have a special obligation
to be super careful in your word choice? And can you appreciate why some people,
some Jewish people and their supporters see things you're saying and think,
I think she knows what she's doing? I would never, ever want anything I say to lead to more hate towards those of Jewish
faith. And that's why I'm very careful when I talk about that issue, because I don't want people to
think that's about Judaism. It isn't. It's not about that. It is about the same power struggles
and structures that we see even in our own country between those that have and those that don't.
and structures that we see even in our own country between those that have and those that don't.
However, I expect the same from those that maybe criticize us, criticize Ilhan and me.
I expect them to also be very measured about how they do it so they're not promoting Islamophobia.
Has the experience you've had over the last 100 days alongside Ilhan Omar made you – brought you to a place where it feels like you want to speak out more about this issue?
Or does it make it feel like you've said what you need to say and maybe now you're going to switch to other issues that you care about and maybe be a little bit quieter? No, I can equally do both, right?
But I feel much more of a responsibility to speak out.
The more they try to shut me up, the more I speak out.
The more they try to bully me, the more I speak out.
You know that even on BDS, I never had a stance on it
until they tried to criminalize it.
So when your colleagues said that boycotting and divesting from Israel should be much harder to do,
that's when you decided, I'm going to support this.
I actually came out when I heard they're going to move the anti-BDS bill.
And the first thing I thought about was all the young people, everybody that I've met,
that truly believes in economic boycott.
But also growing up here, we learned about how economic boycott got us closer to at least a viable civil rights movement in our country.
Do you see all of this as kind of the inevitability of diversity in Congress?
of diversity in Congress.
Is it inevitable that with a more diverse group of lawmakers in the House will come perspectives that are going to challenge
the way that the party approaches this, the party line on Israel?
Having the daughter, the granddaughter of a Palestinian living in the West Bank
in the party in the House.
I don't even just think it's this issue.
I think it's a lot of other issues, issues around poverty,
issues around LGBTQ, issues around immigration,
all of those issues that we're facing, economic justice. This class is bolder, more courageous,
and it's not just the four that everybody concentrates on. It is an incredible class.
Some of the people that picked up seats that were previously held by Republicans sign
on to the Green New Deal. Some are on supporting Medicare for All. You wouldn't have saw that
a few years ago. I say this a lot, but yeah, we look differently, but we also serve and fight
differently, this new Congress.
this new Congress.
Kasey, does it feel different, our visit now, than before?
And if so, what about it feels different?
When you first met me, I just, this was, you know, I just felt like there was this big rainbow outside.
It was just like looming over the Capitol.
But then the storms came, the lightning.
All of that came and it's much more of a difficult journey.
And I still feel it, but it feels different.
It's much harder than I thought that you want to change the world.
That it's all before me.
And it's tough.
It's tougher than people think.
and it's tough.
It's tougher than people think.
Thank you again for your time.
Thank you, Michael.
Thank you, Andy.
Thank you, Jess.
Thank you. Over the weekend, in an interview on the Yahoo podcast Skullduggery,
Rashida Tlaib was asked about her position
that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
would be to create a single state for Israelis and Palestinians,
rather than two separate states.
So what is your vision for a one-state solution that meets
both Palestinian and Israeli Jewish national aspirations?
Absolutely. And let me tell you, I mean, for me, just a few, I think two weeks ago or so,
we celebrated, or just it took a moment, I think, in our country to remember the Holocaust.
And there's, you know, there's a kind of a calming feeling I always tell folks.
When I think of the Holocaust and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, the human dignity, their existence in many ways have been wiped out and some people's passport. I mean, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews post the Holocaust,
post the tragedy and horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time.
Many House Republicans have responded by suggesting Tlaib meant that the Holocaust
itself gave her a calming feeling, not the creation of a state for the Jewish people following the Holocaust.
And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways.
But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away, right?
And it was forced on them.
And so when I think about one state, I think about the fact that
why couldn't we do it in a
better way? Others have criticized Tlaib for misrepresenting history in seeming to suggest
that the Palestinians played a role in the creation of a safe haven for Jews rather than
opposing it. On Sunday night, Tlaib defended herself, tweeting, quote, Policing my words, twisting and turning them to ignite vile attacks on me will not work.
All of you who are trying to silence me will fail miserably.
I will never allow you to take my words out of context, to push your racist and hateful agenda.
The truth will always win.
On Monday, President Trump weighed in on Twitter, saying that Tlaib, quote,
That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.