Rep. Omar Responds to 'Send Her Back!' Chant

'I am where I belong,' she says after Trump rally
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 18, 2019 6:00 AM CDT
Rep. Omar Responds to 'Send Her Back!' Chant
President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd as he arrives to speak at a campaign rally at Williams Arena in Greenville, N.C., Wednesday, July 17, 2019.   (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

When President Trump spoke about Rep. Ilhan Omar at a rally in North Carolina Wednesday, supporters broke out in a chant of "Send her back!" The freshman lawmaker from Minnesota took notice. "I am where I belong, at the people’s house and you’re just gonna have to deal!" she tweeted. She also shared a Maya Angelou poem with the line, "You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise." Omar is one of the four lawmakers with whom Trump has been publicly feuding, and he continued his criticism of all four at the rally, notes the Wall Street Journal. "Obviously and importantly, she has a history of launching vicious anti-Semitic screeds," said Trump of Omar at one point, a reference to this controversy. Omar was born in Somalia but came to the US as a child.

The chant, similar to the "Lock her up!" cries from the 2016 campaign, is now getting plenty of attention. It "exemplified the tribal politics and white nationalism that Trump is making clear he plans to ride to reelection, no matter their impact on America's fragile societal harmony," writes Stephen Collinson in an opinion piece at CNN. But at Fox News, Laura Ingraham accused the media of "conjured-up outrage" over the chant, reports Mediaite. "Are the media and the Democrats missing how many Americans feel about what they’re told about the way they should think from these four elected officials?" she asked. (This week, the House voted to condemn Trump's original tweets about the four lawmakers known collectively as The Squad.)

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