Do Trump rally taunts mark new strategy?
The chant comes as tensions escalate between the president
What’s the reaction?
Ms Omar told reporters on Thursday: “Every single person who is in this country, who’s aspiring to become part of the American fabric understands that nothing this president says should be taken to heart.”
“As he’s spewing his fascist ideology on stage, telling US citizens to go back because they don’t agree with his detrimental policies for our country, we tell people that here in the US dissent is patriotic, here in the US disagreement is welcome.”
On Wednesday, Miss Omar tweeted lines from Maya Angelou’s poem Still I Rise and later shared a photo of herself in the House of Representatives saying, “I am where I belong”.
On Twitter, #IStandWithIlhan began trending as Democrats
President @realDonaldTrump whipped up a toxic brew of racism, xenophobia, nativism
His crowd chanting “send her back” about a member of Congress & US citizen
The way he appeals to the worst instincts of some people was despicable—eerily familiar to what happens in dictatorships
9,306 11:53 AM – Jul 18, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy 5,240 people are talking about this
Some conservatives have also censured the use of the phrase.
Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee Tom Emmer – who, like Miss Omar, represents Minnesota in Congress – told reporters he did not agree with the language.
according to Politico. He said the chant was “not acceptable”.
North Carolina congressman Mark Walker said that he “struggled” with the chant and that the focus should be on “her history, words & actions” instead of “phrasing that’s painful to our friends in the minority communities”.
His fellow Republican Adam Kinzinger said the chants were “ugly”.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said “chanting for her deportation based on her exercise of the First Amendment is disgusting”.
Senator Lindsay Graham, a vocal Trump supporter, defended the president, though he said he wished Mr Trump would focus on “policies not the personality”.
“I’ve said before that if you’re a Somali refugee wearing a Maga hat, he doesn’t want to send you back. You’d probably have dinner at the White House,” Mr Graham told reporters.
Republican leader Mitch McConnell told the Fox Business Network on Thursday that Mr Trump is “on to something” by attacking the four congresswomen as their policies will be important in the upcoming election.
“We’re in a big debate now and next year about what we want America to be like. Do we really think socialism applies here at a time of great prosperity, 50-year-low unemployment?”
A recipe for a toxic campaign
Three years ago, crowds at Donald Trump rallies called for the imprisonment of a political adversary. On Wednesday, they chanted for a member of the opposition party to be expelled from the country.
These are not behaviours emblematic of a healthy, well-functioning democracy.
The president’s defenders have parsed his incendiary language in an effort to explain why telling people to “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” is not simply the latest iteration of age-old racist invective. It was, they insist, just a Trumpian twist on “love it or leave it” sloganeering.
When the rhetoric filters down to the president’s vocal crowds, however, such nuance is lost.
Mr Trump is an instinctual politician who senses weakness and opportunity and often acts before a strategy is fully formed. The goal, however, is clear. He is both trying to sow divisions within Democratic ranks and rile up a base whose enthusiastic turnout will be needed in the coming election.
Such a course is not without risk, however. His actions could motivate and unify opponents as much as they do his base. It’s a recipe for a toxic, divisive campaign that will get ugly – and fast.
What else has Mr Trump said?
In an interview with the Daily Mail just before the Greenville rally, Mr Trump said he was “not unhappy” with the way the row has played out and said he believes he is “winning the political fight…by a lot”.
“I’m not relishing the fight,” Mr Trump said. “I’m enjoying it because I have to get the word out to the American people. And you have to enjoy what you do. I enjoy what I do.”
What’s the background?
In a series of tweets on Sunday, the president said the four congresswomen – who he did not identify – “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” and should “go back”.
The president has denied accusations that the tweets were racist, but the Democrat-controlled House passed a symbolic resolution denouncing Mr Trump’s “racist comments that have legitimised fear and hatred of New Americans and people of colour”.
A July poll by the Pew Research Center found that while 62% of overall Americans believe openness to people from around the world is “essential to who we are as a nation”, 57% of Republicans said the US risks “losing our identity as a nation” if it is too open.
Earlier on Wednesday, a bid to launch impeachment proceedings against Mr Trump was blocked in the US House of Representatives after it failed to win enough support, with only 95 Democrats voting in favour.
