President Trump claims he “wasn’t happy” with the “Send her back!” chant aimed at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that erupted during a campaign rally Wednesday night.
Yet the chant mirrored his own words on Sunday, when he said Omar and three other congresswomen of color should “go back” to “the crime-infested places from which they came.”
All four women are U.S. citizens, and only Omar is an immigrant, brought to America as a child from Somalia.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, the president said: “I wasn’t happy with that message that they gave last night. I was not happy when I heard that chant.”
He insisted that he started to speak again “very quickly,” hoping it would stop.
In fact, he paused for about 13 seconds, looking around at the chanting crowd, showing no sign of disapproval.
Watch below:
The implied criticism of his own supporters conflicted with Trump’s own praise for them following the rally in North Carolina, when he tweeted: “What a crowd, and what great people.”
Trump’s effort “to dissociate himself from his own supporters reflected the misgivings of his allies, who have flooded the upper echelons of his team with expressions of concern in the wake of a rally that veered into ugly nativist territory,” says the New York Times. “They warned privately that the president was on dangerous ground, according to people briefed on the conversations.”
“Asked what he thought prompted the chant, Trump told reporters that they should go to North Carolina and ask the people there. And he said that if such a chant took place again, he would try to stop it,” reports the Washington Post.
The president performed his pivot after a Thursday morning meeting about the previous night’s events with his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka. Others in the White House inner circle urged him “to quickly repudiate the chant,” the Times says.
Omar, meanwhile, pointed out there’s nothing new about Trump’s behavior: for years, he falsely claimed that Barack Obama was not a U.S. native, when in fact the former president was born in Hawaii.
Omar says she does not fear for her own safety, but she worries about other Muslim immigrants.
“When you have a president who clearly thinks someone like me should go back, the message that he is sending is not for me, it is for every single person who shares my identity,” she said.
