A growing number of Republican lawmakers are expressing discomfort over chants of “send her back” that broke out at President Donald Trump’s campaign rally Wednesday evening, as he targeted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and three other progressive freshman congresswomen.
Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), the vice chair of the House Republican Conference, tweeted late Wednesday that “though it was brief, I struggled with the ‘send her back’ chant tonight referencing” Omar, a Somali refugee who immigrated to the U.
S. with her family in the early 1990s and became a citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old.“Her history, words & actions reveal her great disdain for both America & Israel. That should be our focus and not phrasing that’s painful to our friends in the minority communities,” Walker
“I didn’t watch the rally last night, but there’s no place for that kind of talk,” said Rep. Tom Emmer, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee who represents Minnesota alongside Omar in the House. “I don’t agree with it.”
Emmer, speaking at an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, declined to say whether the chant was racist, instead characterizing it as “not acceptable.”
The president in recent days has ramped up his incendiary attacks against a quartet of high-profile House Democrats — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — referencing his feud with the progressive lawmakers to inflame the crowd at Greenville, N.
C.’s East Carolina University on Wednesday."They are always telling us how to run it, how to do this," Trump said at the rally. "You know what? If they don't love it, tell them to leave it."
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) denounced the display on Twitter early Thursday,
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters in the Capitol on Thursday morning that the phrase “send her back” was not inherently racist, and maintained that Trump’s attack against Omar was rooted not in racial animosity but instead provoked by her outspoken opposition to the president.
“I’ve said before that if you're Somali refugee wearing a ‘MAGA’ hat, he doesn't want to send you back. You’ll probably have dinner at the White House,” Graham said.
“The bottom line is that if you embrace his policies, it doesn't matter where you come from, he probably likes you,” he added.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who joined Trump for the rally, dismissed the chants Thursday morning during an appearance on Fox News.
“Any time you get into a crowd like that and you’ve got a lot of supporters, they’re going to say what they want to say,” he said.
“We’ve got to shift the attention back to some of the positions that they're taking that are extreme,” he added. “Now the media here on Capitol Hill only want to talk about parsing the president's words. I’m not going to answer a question of them unless they come back and talk about the things that actually lit this candle — and It's the extreme positions taken by AOC, Omar and the so-called ‘gang.’”
Asked to respond to characterizations of the rally attendees in his home state as racist, Tillis answered: “I refuse to take that bait. This is about people who want to change America. This is about people who have a socialist vision for the United States.”
Rep. Justin Amash, the independent Michigan congressman whose calls for Trump’s impeachment led to his departure from the Republican Party earlier this month, tweeted Thursday: “A chant like ‘Send her back!’ is ugly and dangerous, and it is the inevitable consequence of President Trump’s demagoguery." He cautioned: “This is how history’s worst episodes begin. We must not allow this man to take us to such a place.”
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine