Article snippet: Senate Majority Leader McConnell tried to quell the controversy that has raged since Sunday when Trump tweeted that four minority Democratic lawmakers should “go back” to their home countries — even though all of them are U.S. citizens — by calling for a broad ceasefire in Washington. “The president is not a racist,” McConnell responded after reporters pressed him Tuesday afternoon on whether Trump’s tweets were racist or whether the GOP leader himself would ever use such language. Yet in his prepared remarks he also acknowledged that the president as well as the House Democratic freshmen with whom Trump has feuded over Twitter are responsible for letting things spin out of control. “I think there’s a consensus that political rhetoric has really gotten way, way overheated all across the political spectrum,” he said. McConnell’s two-pronged strategy, distancing his party from Trump’s rhetoric while also being careful not to alienate the president and his core supporters, mirrored the balancing act that many GOP lawmakers are trying to pull off, with mixed results. Trump’s tweet from Sunday, which he backed up with similar rhetoric during a Rose Garden ceremony Monday, set GOP lawmakers scrambling to control the political fallout. A handful of Republican lawmakers facing potentially tough races next year in Colorado, Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona took different tacks in their responses, signaling the lack of a general plan on how to react... Link to the full article to read more