Photo: Ting Shen/Xinhua via Getty; Paras Griffin/Getty
Days afterwaving off the backlashto hisracist tweetsabout four congresswomen of color, PresidentDonald Trumpsaid he did not agree with the“send her back!” chant that broke outthis week at one of his rallies.
Trump also claimed he tried to stop the chant, despite video showing otherwise.
“I was not happy with it. I disagree with it. I didn’t say that, they did,” he told reporters Thursday from the White House of the crowd’s raucous response to his criticisms ofRep. Ilhan Omarof Minnesota. Supporters invoked Trump’s own attacks on Omar days earlier.
“It was quite a chant,” Trump told reporters, but added, “I felt a little bit badly about it.”
Trump also said he “started speaking very quickly” in order to cut his supporters short, though video shows he stopped speaking for more than 10 seconds as attendees chanted. (Chants are a regular feature of Trump’s rallies.)
The “send her back!” chant happened Wednesday in North Carolina, three days after the presidentcriticized Omar and other progressive congresswomen of coloron Twitter and urged them to “go back” to the “crime-infested places from which they came,” despite the fact that they are American and three of them were born in the U.S.
Though Trump was speaking specifically about Omar on Wednesday, his earlier tweets were also directed at New York Rep.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who, together with Omar, call themselves “The Squad.”
The four, who support progressive policies such as Medicare-for-all and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, regularly criticize the president’s administration and have called for his impeachment.
‘The Squad’: Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley.J Scott Applewhite/AP/Shutterstock
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Trump has continued to defend his inflammatory remarks, instead pointing to what he says is “vile” rhetoric on the part of the four congresswoman, whom he said “hate” America. On Tuesday, hours before the House of Representatives took the rare step of formally condemning his tweets, Trump tweeted, “I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!”
He previously said the backlash “doesn’t concern me, because many people agree with me. All I’m saying is if they want to leave, they can leave now.”
“I am where I belong, at the people’s house and you’re just gonna have to deal!” the Minnesota politician wrote, alongside a photo of herself wearing a hijab as she sat on the House floor.
source: people.com
