Former President Barack Obama on Saturday said he was “proud” of his former African American administration staffers after 148 of them co-signed a Washington Post op-ed this weekend condemning President Donald Trump and his administration for “poisoning” our “democracy.”

“I’ve always been proud of what this team accomplished during my administration. But more than what we did, I’m proud of how they’re continuing to fight for an America that’s better,” Obama tweeted, alongside a link to the article titled “We are African Americans, we are patriots, and we refuse to sit idly by,” published on Friday.

“There is truly nothing more un-American than calling on fellow citizens to leave our country — by citing their immigrant roots, or ancestry, or their unwillingness to sit in quiet obedience while democracy is being undermined,” the former administration officials added. “We refuse to sit idly by as racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia are wielded by the president and any elected official complicit in the poisoning of our democracy.”

The op-ed comes after Trump urged four progressive lawmakers, all women of color, to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” in a series of tweets earlier this month. Despite the president’s suggestion that all the congresswomen were foreign-born, all but one were born in America. Congresswoman Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, and moved to the U.S. at a young age after her family fled from their home nation.

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Source: Newsweek