Since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Democrats have made xenophobic comments about DOGE chief Elon Musk and first lady Melania Trump.
Some of the party’s leaders have repeatedly complained about Musk’s country of birth being South Africa and told Trump to look into deporting his wife, who was born in the former Yugoslavia.
Speaking at an anti-DOGE protest in Los Angeles March 22, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., suggested Trump should investigate and potentially deport the first lady.
“When he [Trump] talks about birthright, and he’s going to undo the fact that the Constitution allows those who are born here, even if the parents are undocumented, they have a right to stay in America. If he wants to start looking so closely to find those who were born here and their parents were undocumented, maybe he ought to first look at Melania,” Waters said on stage at a rally in Los Angeles, various videos posted to social media show.
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Since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Democrats have raised concerns about DOGE chief Elon Musk and first lady Melania Trump. (AP; Getty Images)
“We don’t know whether or not her parents were documented. And maybe we better just take a look.”
The first lady became a U.S. citizen in 2006, according to official government biographies. She is the first U.S. first lady to become a naturalized citizen and the second first lady to be born outside the U.S., following President John Quincy Adams’ wife, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, who was born in London in 1775.
Democrats, however, have reserved some of their most vitriolic attacks for Musk, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995 and became a citizen in 2002.
Speaking at a congressional Democratic rally protesting musk’s access to the Treasury Department Feb. 4, Rep. Janelle Bynum, D-Ore., compared Musk to the British burning the city of Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., has suggested first lady Melania Trump could be deported. (Getty Images)
“They always told us the British had come to storm the city. They always reminded us the British had come, and they burned everything down, and we could never let that happen again. They told us, and here we are, Trump and his billionaire boy band. They are not British this time. This one is South African. But they came back,” said Bynum.
Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., did not use allegories, but simply called for Musk to “go back to South Africa.”
“It was interesting yesterday. I was watching a video of an interview of Elon Musk with someone where he said that the Italians should stay in Italy and the Chinese should stay in China. My question to Elon Musk is, what the hell are you doing here in America?” Velazquez said while speaking at an event outside the HUD Department.
Even before Musk took the helm at DOGE, far-left Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, slammed him during a Jan. 20 interview for not being born in the U.S. while suggesting he supported apartheid.
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Rep. Jasmine Crockett touted the Signal app in comments over the weekend. (Allison Bailey/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
“[Musk] went from being the dork that was jumping around on stage to allegedly being this amazing genius that’s going to save this entire country, the country he wasn’t born in and a country that maybe he doesn’t agree with, the idea of a Democratic Republic, considering the fact that he may have been more so on the side of apartheid,” said Crockett.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., piled on further, suggesting in a February interview that Musk was reverting to a fascist state of mind due to his South African heritage.
“I think that’s a leftover from Elon Musk’s South African heritage, and maybe he’s falling too far back on the apartheid system of government that was a fascist form of government,” said Connolly.
“Here in the United States, Mr. Musk,” he added, “we have three branches of government, each of them separate but coequal, and, ultimately, the judicial branch is the deciding factor when there is a dispute between the other two branches of government. That’s how our system works here.”
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Elon Musk with mother Maye Musk. (Reuters/Danny Moloshok)
Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., accused Musk’s parents of trying to deny Black people their rights in South Africa, comparing them to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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“Why can’t you understand? The Ukranians [sic] are fighting for the same thing which his parents tried to deny black South Africans,” Cohen wrote in a February X post.
“Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., also suggested Musk did not care for democracy because he came from South Africa.
“Elon Musk, who grew up in apartheid, Trump who worships dictators around the country, and strong men, are not interested in our constitutional republic,” Omar said.
Despite these claims, a Snopes fact-check found the reason Musk left his birth country in the first place was to avoid military service because he did not want to fight for an apartheid state.
