Trump Rally Crowd Chants “Send Her Back” as the President Attacks Ilhan Omar
At a Wednesday night rally in Greenville, North Carolina, Donald Trump stuck mostly to his teleprompter script and doubled down on racist attacks against his political opponents. For Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, Trump brought back his "Pocahontas" nickname, a racial slur that mocks Warren's claims that her family has some Cherokee lineage.
But Trump mostly focused on re-upping his attacks on four minority Democratic congresswomen: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. The previous weekend, Trump tweeted about the four women, calling them extremists and saying they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."
At the rally, he was particularly incensed about Ocasio-Cortez referring to his administration's immigrant detention camps as "concentration camps," and repeated that the four American citizens should leave the country. "I have a suggestion for the hate-filled extremists who are constantly trying to tear our country down," Trump said. "That’s why I say: If they don’t like it, let them leave. If they don’t love it, tell them to leave it. I’m just saying it’s their choice, they can come back when they want."
He took the time to address each woman individually. The audience booed when he said Ocasio-Cortez's name, but he added, "I don't have time to call her three different names, we'll call her Cortez." And Rashida Tlaib "used the F-word to describe the presidency and your president," he said, apparently referring to Tlaib's "impeach the motherfucker" comment back in January. "With the big, fat―vicious the way she said it―F-word. That’s not somebody who loves our country," Trump went on.
But the most vitriol was saved for Ilhan Omar. "And obviously and importantly, Omar has a history of launching vicious, anti-Semitic screeds." He paused there as the crowd loudly chanted, "Send her back."
Omar, in response to video of the chants and members of the crowd yelling "traitor" at the mention of her name, tweeted lines from Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise": You may shoot me with your words, / You may cut me with your eyes, / You may kill me with your hatefulness, / But still, like air, I’ll rise."
Originally Appeared on GQ
