Don’t believe your lying eyes and ears, President Trump may have well have said as he tried to disavow the racist chants of “send her back” that the crowd at his rally last night in North Carolina began shouting as he began his attacks on Somali-born Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) during his speech.
Trump was engaging in another day of damage control today after the incident which followed the nearly universal condemnation — outside of his bigoted base and cowardly Republican politicians — of a series of racist tweets that the president had sent previously telling Representative Omar and her three progressive freshman female Democratic colleagues — Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) — to “go back to where you came from.”
While anyone with the stomach to actually watch the footage of the Trump rally last night could clearly see the president pausing and basking in the chanted wave of hatred towards his chosen opponents that he inspired in the crowd, Trump today tried to distance himself from his followers and pin the blame on them for the chants that resembled nothing more than a 1930’s Nazi rally.
“I was not happy with it. I disagree with it. But again, I didn’t say that, they did,” Trump said to reporters at the White House this morning.
The president — despite no evidence on the videotape of the event — now claims that he tried to stop the chants, although he never once admonished the crowd for their cries or asked them to stop.
“I felt a little bit badly about it. But I will say this — and I started speak — it started up rather fast,” Trump said.
“It was quite a chant,” Trump whistfully declared.
President Trump on "send her back" chant: "I was not happy with it. I disagree with it." pic.twitter.com/qEplHgf2vM
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 18, 2019
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Original reporting by Kevin Liptak at CNN.
