Republican governor says president has brought ‘disgrace to public life’

Donald Trump remains under fire for his racist tweets telling four Democratic congresswomen to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”, with the Republican governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, the latest to break ranks and attack his “shameful, racist, disgraceful” comments and accuse the president of bringing “disgrace to public policy and public life”.

“The president’s tweets were shameful, they were racist and… they bring a tremendous amount of, sort of, disgrace to public policy and public life and I condemn them all,” said Baker.

The governor appeared to be coming to the defence of Ayanna Pressley specifically, one of the four members of “The Squad” – along with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – and the first black woman to be elected to the US House from Massachusetts.

Speaking at the quartet’s press conference on Monday night, Pressley urged the American public not to “take the bait” of the president’s dog whistle racism.

Here’s a reminder of the original offending tweets and everything the president has tweeted since as part of the worst self-inflicted crisis he has found himself embroiled in since the last one.