If it wasn’t clear how Rep. Filemon Vela felt about Donald Trump before, it is now. The Texas Democrat sent an open letter to the presumptive Republican nominee telling him just where to put the border wall he’s been calling for since the start of his campaign.
“Mr. Trump, you’re a racist and you can take your border wall and shove it up your ass,” wrote the second-term congressman. “I would like to end this letter in a more diplomatic fashion, but I think that you, of all people, understand why I cannot.”
The letter was first reported by the Texas Tribune.
Vela, who represents a border region of Texas, was responding to the latest controversy by Trump related to the Hispanic community — pillorying Trump for his criticism of Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge in Southern California overseeing the Trump University case. The Indiana-born Curiel has Mexican heritage, but Trump has said Curiel cannot be impartial because he is a “Mexican” and Trump wants to build a wall with along that country’s border.
Vela did not mince words.
“You have now descended to a new low in your racist attack of an American jurist, U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, by calling him a ‘Mexican’ simply because he ruled against you,” Vela wrote, warning Trump not to “dismiss me as just another ‘Mexican.'”
