If Republicans can't condemn Trump's racist tweets, they are as racist as he is

President Donald Trump didn’t invent bigotry. It’s always been there, just beneath the surface where America’s collective conscience could pretend it didn’t exist.

Immigrants like me know it because we’ve endured the incessant “go back” drumbeat from the moment we set foot on American soil. Every generation of immigrants has endured it, from the Africans, the Irish, the Chinese to the Mexicans.

But Trump propelled bigotry into mainstream America. We can’t pretend it doesn’t exist, as Republicans collectively tried to do Sunday after the president’s attack on four nonwhite congresswomen.