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President Trump met with members of his cabinet Tuesday morning, as he continues to face backlash over his inflammatory tweets, although that backlash isn’t coming from his administration. So far, they’re either defending the president or distancing themselves from his tweet Sunday suggesting that progressive women of color should “go back” to their countries. 

During the cabinet meeting, the president continued to defend his remarks, saying if the congresswomen decide to leave the U.S. they can go “wherever they want.” 

“It’s up to them,” he said. “Go wherever they want, or they can stay. But they should love our country. They shouldn’t hate our country. You look at what they’ve said, I have clips right here — the most vile, horrible statements about our country, about Israel, about others. Uh, it’s up to them. They can do what they want. They can leave they can stay but they should love our country and they should work for the good of our country.”

The president sparked a firestorm over the weekend with a series of tweets seemingly targeting freshmen Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar that were immediately and widely condemned as racist. He wrote that the representatives — three of whom were born in the U.S., and all American citizens — should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Mr. Trump has continued to stand by his tweeted remarks over the weekend, tweeting Tuesday morning that he doesn’t have a “racist bone” in his body. 

Freshman Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez retorted, “You’re right, Mr. President – you don’t have a racist bone in your body. You have a racist mind in your head, and a racist heart in your chest. That’s why you violate the rights of children and tell the Congresswoman who represents your home borough, to “go back to my country.”

But perhaps the president’s most vigorous defense of his remarks came Monday on the White House South Lawn, when he shrugged off concerns that white nationalists are harnessing his remarks. 

“It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me. And all I’m saying, they want to leave, they can leave,” Mr. Trump said Monday. 

Administration officials have either declined to comment on the president’s tweets or defended him. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the president’s comments weren’t racist. Top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow declined to comment Monday, saying the president had tweeted what he’d tweeted. 

But some former administration officials condemned the president’s remarks. Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci tweeted, “Would @realDonaldTrump ever tell a white immigrant – whether 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th+ generation – to ‘go back to your country’? No. That’s why the comments were racist and unacceptable. America is a nation of immigrants founded on the ideals of free thought and free speech.”

During his cabinet meeting Tuesday, the president said the immigration legislation his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has been working on with Congress is nearly ready, and if it doesn’t pass, it will become a campaign issue. 

“Our country really has a tremendous immigration gap,” the president said, describing the current immigration system as a “maze of complexity.”