U.S. President Donald Trump is disavowing chants of “send her back” at his political rally which were heard when he questioned the loyalty of U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a war refugee from Somalia.
“I was not happy when I heard that chant,” Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office, adding he disagreed with it.
Asked why he did not try to stop the chant at the event on Wednesday evening in North Carolina, the president replied: “I think I did – I started speaking very quickly.”
Omar when asked about Trump on Thursday by reporters outside the Capitol, replied, “I believe he is fascist.”
She asked: “Because I criticized the president, I should be deported?”
Omar is one of four new Democratic Party members of Congress who are women of color who have repeatedly been attacked by Trump since Sunday on social media and in public comments. The congresswoman posted a tweet late Wednesday featuring a picture of herself wearing a hijab and seated in the speaker’s chair in the U.S. House of Representatives chamber along with a message for Trump and his supporters, who have in recent days repeatedly suggested the U.S. citizen “go back” to Somalia.
“I am where I belong, at the people’s house and you’re just gonna have to deal!” Omar wrote.
?? I am where I belong, at the people’s house and you’re just gonna have to deal! pic.twitter.com/W0OvDXGxQX
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) July 18, 2019
Also, Omar late Wednesday, quoted the late African American poet Maya Angelou, tweeting, “You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like the air, I’ll arise.”
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.-Maya Angelou https://t.co/46jcXSXF0B
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) July 18, 2019
“I think in some cases they hate America,” Trump, at the rally, said Wednesday evening of Congresswomen Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayana Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.
When Trump accused Omar of “anti-Semitic screeds,” the crowd in Greenville, North Carolina, responded with chants of “send her back.”
“These congresswomen, their comments are helping to fuel the rise of a militant hard left,” declared Trump at the event.
A Republican congressman, Adam Kinzinger, is warning the behavior exhibited at Trump’s rally the previous evening threatens to tear apart the country.
I deeply disagree with the extreme left & have been disgusted by their tone. I woke up today equally disgusted – chants like “send her back” are ugly, wrong, & would send chills down the spines of our Founding Fathers. This ugliness must end, or we risk our great union.
— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) July 18, 2019
During his 90-minute rally on Wednesday, Trump several times thanked other Democrats in the House for voting down, hours earlier, an attempt to push articles of impeachment against him.
Trump called Congressman Al Green’s raising the impeachment issue in the House “a sneak attack.”
The 332-95 vote to kill the measure was the first action on the issue by the chamber since the Democrats took control of it in January.
Green defied party leadership, who contend formally raising the impeachment issue is premature as House committees, led by the Democrats who control the chamber, continue to investigate Trump and members of his Cabinet.
“We’re not having him set our agenda; we’re setting our own agenda,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday said of Trump.
On Tuesday night, four Republicans joined every Democrat in the House to approve a resolution condemning Trump’s “racist” remarks. At the center of the dispute was Trump’s Sunday tweet telling the four congresswomen to “go back” to their countries to fix them before attacking the United States, even though all four are U.S. citizens and only Omar was not born in the country.
The House resolution, which was passed 240-187, “strongly condemns” Trump’s “racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color.”
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