A Trump 2020 campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, descended into a cesspool of hatred after the crowd started chanting “send her back! send her back!” referencing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a United States citizen who came to the country almost 30 years ago as a child refugee.
As the Guardian notes, Trump used the rally to attack Omar and the other three Democratic congresswomen known as “The Squad,” calling them “hate-filled extremists.”
Over the past week, the president has attacked the women and their loyalties online and in the media – all starting with telling the lawmakers who are all women of color, to “go back” to their “crime-infested” countries.
This is, of course, despite the fact that Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) were all born in the United States, and that Omar herself has been a citizen longer than the current first lady, Melania Trump.
But Trump is showing his hand, and how he will play it in the next election season, repeatedly doubling down on his words, even as the House of Representatives voted yesterday to condemn his racist language.
As Trump directly referenced Omar in his rally speech on Wednesday, the crowd booed, before launching into their raucous chants of “send her back.”
The appalling chant immediately led to swift push back on Twitter, with the hashtag #IStandWithIlhan trending as elected officials and others started tweeting in Omar’s defense and calling out the racist behavior.
Omar herself responded to the outright racism with all the confidence and class that one would expect from her.
In one tweet, she shared a photo of her presiding over the U.S. House of Representatives, writing: “I am where I belong, at the people’s house and you’re just gonna have to deal!”
She also responded with words from the iconic Maya Angelou poem, Still I Rise.
