Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. That’s what I call on this cowardly racist hatemonger. Apparently, he now claims to feel bad that his supporters at a Greenville, NC rally Wednesday night chanted “send her back” in reference to Rep. Ilhan Omar, a U.S. citizen who came to our country as a refugee from Somalia when she was a child. I’ll add that the CNN reporter covering the event characterized the crowd as “fevered.”
Faced with a serious outcry resulting from this chant (including from his own daughter), here’s what President Individual 1 said on Thursday: "I was not happy with it. I disagree with it.” Nevertheless, he refused to accept responsibility for what his crowd chanted, and deflected the blame: “But again, I didn't say that, they did." He then offered the lame defense that, by continuing his speech, he was somehow trying to contain the chant. What a load of crap.
Bear in mind that Trump had, in previous days, tweeted that Omar and the other congresswomen of color who make up The Squad should “go back” to the “countries” they “originally came from” (even though three of the four Squad members were born right here in America). He had also said that if The Squad members “hate our country, if you’re not happy here, you can leave,” and repeated similar sentiments on Twitter. Even if he didn’t use the exact words “send her back,” he might as well have. Trump and the chanters at his rally were absolutely on the same page.
As for Trump’s reaction to the chant in the moment, he waited a dozen seconds—while it went on and on—before resuming his remarks. He didn’t say a goddamned word about “send her back,” thus giving the clear impression that he had no problem with those words. The New York Times wrote that Trump’s assertion that he attempted to stop the chant was “clearly contradicted by video of the event.” As our own Hunter noted, “Trump backed away from the microphone as the chant began; he in fact delayed speaking his next lines while the volume of the chant built up.” Not only that, but here’s what he tweeted out a few hours after the rally ended—having had plenty of time to compose an expression of his being “not happy” about the chant:
“What a crowd, and what great people.” But crickets about the chant. What I did hear, however, were echoes of his remarks after Charlottesville.
On Thursday Trump lamely added: “I felt a little bit badly about it. But I will say this—and I started speak—it started up rather fast. It was quite a chant.” Quite a disgusting, hate-filled, and yes, racist chant. He must have forgotten those other adjectives.
Then, on Friday, Trump even disavowed his disavowal of “send her back.” In the morning he tweeted about the matter and mentioned the chant without including any indication that he disapproved even though, in the same tweet, he found space to refer to “the vile and disgusting statements made by the three Radical Left Congresswomen.” Nothing this time about him being “not happy” about the chant. Then, in a midday Oval Office event, he went even further, as you can see for yourself:
As for Rep. Omar, her response could not have been a more powerful statement of what American democracy and inclusion is all about:
Going further, Omar offered a real definition of what it means to be a patriot: “True patriotism is not about blindly supporting a single Administration. True patriotism is about fighting for our country and its dignity. True patriotism means making sure people of our country and our Constitution are uplifted and protected.” She is 100% right, and she’s the one who is an incredible patriot.
Trump, meanwhile, cannot be allowed to deny the culpability he bears here. By not speaking up in the moment and saying what he, one day later, claims to have believed about the remarks, he revealed himself to be an utter coward. He was unable and unwilling to stand up against the hate coming up from the crowd he had gathered and whipped into a frenzy. Probably because he agreed with them.
In that moment, Trump forever ingrained himself as the weaker, lesser man in comparison to Senator John McCain, whom he can’t seem to stop hating even after the latter’s death. McCain was far from a perfect politician, and as a progressive I disagreed with him most of the time on policy. But what he did at a campaign event on October 10, 2008, tells you everything about the difference between him and Trump. During that event, one of his male supporters said that the prospect of Barack Obama becoming president left him feeling “scared.”
How did McCain respond:
“First of all, I want to be president of the United States and obviously I do not want Senator Obama to be, but I have to tell you—I have to tell you—he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared" of "as president of the United States.”
Do you know how McCain’s audience responded? They booed him loudly. But he did not waver. At the same rally, a woman said: “I can’t trust Obama.” McCain listened and nodded. However, when she continued on and explained that the reason she can’t trust Obama is that “he’s an Arab,” McCain did the exact opposite of what Trump would have done. He immediately shook his head to make clear his disagreement—Trump couldn’t even bring himself to do that in response to “send her back”—and then, even though his supporter had more to say, McCain calmly and gently reclaimed the microphone and corrected her: “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].”
In 2017, when it became public that Senator McCain had been diagnosed with the brain cancer that would ultimately take his life, I wrote about these events in more detail than I’ll go into here. At that time I posed a question about what might happen if the current occupant of the Oval Office was faced with something similar coming from his supporters at a public event: “Just take a second to ask yourself how Donald Trump would have responded.” If there was any doubt, now we know for sure.
Rather than take the obvious opportunity to play on people’s fears in order to get elected president, McCain put his country first. In the video above, he certainly doesn’t look like someone who, before beginning to speak, calculated what response would help him most politically. Unlike McCain, The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote has clearly decided that his reelection campaign, just like his 2016 campaign, will seek to provoke the fears, anxieties, and, yes, hatred felt by too many white Americans toward those who don’t look like them. Sen. Chuck Schumer aptly summed things up:
Even when given an opportunity to disavow the support of open white nationalists (i.e., white supremacists) for his recent remarks—something he could have easily done even without walking them back—Trump refused. Rather than say he rejected any and all support from those, er, very fine people, he replied, in matter of fact fashion: “It doesn't concern me because many people agree with me.” I guess when you’re as unprincipled as Trump, the more people who agree with you the better, no matter what else those people stand for.
Electoral politics is what these racist attacks on Omar and The Squad are about. Trump has already offered that he’s “winning [this] political fight. I think I’m winning it by a lot.” This statement makes clear that he will tear this country apart if he thinks it will win him votes. While he falsely claimed that the members of The Squad “hate our country,” I would argue that no one who truly loves our country would act the way he has.
On a related note, my new book documents how these kinds of tactics have been central to right-wing rhetoric for years, in particular when it comes to attacks on leaders of color. In the second chapter—called “Inventing the Anti-American President”—I lay out some of the many instances Rush Limbaugh lied about President Obama and claimed that he somehow hated America or was otherwise anti-American. Here are four—all from a single 11-week period in 2010:
- “We thought that Obama was our first post-American president. We might have underestimated him. Our first anti-American president.” (August 16, 2010)
- “He [Obama] hates America.” (September 30, 2010)
- “He [Obama] doesn’t like much of what’s American.” (October 13, 2010)
- “. . . by virtue of its character, America was evil . . . . I’ve always believed Obama felt this” and “Barack Obama and his crowd see this country as a great Satan.” (October 28, 2010)
The book argues that Limbaugh’s race-baiting rhetoric about Obama, his presidency, and his policies paved the way for Trump by heightening white racial and cultural resentment toward minorities and directing those feelings at liberals such as the 44th president. Trump’s birtherism and his campaign rhetoric about immigrants and immigration policy followed that same formula. Only conservatives, in this mindset, will protect the interests of white, Christian Americans and the America they supposedly created—an America which people like Barack Obama and Ilhan Omar purportedly “hate.” Trump’s most recent attacks on tThe Squad have employed just this kind of language.
When it comes to Rep. Omar specifically, although we agree on most policies I have disagreed on occasion with some of the language she has used about Israel and those Americans who support it. I have also made clear that I appreciate her having listened to some of the more reasonable reactions to her remarks, as evidenced by the fact that she has more recently framed her legitimate criticisms of Israeli policy in ways that avoid more problematic tropes.
Just this week Omar again took the opportunity, in an interview with Gayle King on CBS (that also included fellow members of The Squad), to make clear where she stands on these matters: “I am grateful for the opportunity to really learn how my words make people feel and have taken every single opportunity I've gotten to make sure that people understood that I apologize for it.”
The conversation continued as follows:
KING: Would you like to make it clear that you are not anti-Semitic?
OMAR: Oh, certainly not.
KING: Would you like to make that clear?
OMAR: Yes and that nothing I said, at least to me, was meant for that purpose.
As part of his long, multifaceted, hate-filled racist diatribe against The Squad, Trump lied about Rep. Omar, falsely claiming that she “Hates Israel. Hates Jews. Hates Jews. It’s very simple.” There is simply no evidence to back up those claims, but that won’t stop this demagogue of a president. Omar declared, in response to this batch of lies, that she would “not dignify it with an answer.” Let me answer on her behalf: She’s not the one spreading hate, Mr. President, you are.
Furthermore, as a Jewish American, I want to say one other thing to Trump: how dare you use the Jewish people and the Jewish state as tools to promote your campaign of hate. I can’t properly express how enraged this makes me feel. I do know it will only push me to work that much harder to beat you in 2020.
As for the timing, it’s no coincidence that Trump unleashed this latest round of hatred when he did. Only a couple of days earlier, Trump had suffered an embarrassing defeat on the matter of putting a question about citizenship on the census. What better way to get those who see him as the champion of white identity to forget that he couldn’t deliver on the census then to stir up a hornet’s nest of racism centered around the idea of sending people born elsewhere “back” to where they came from.
More broadly, Trump’s policies have not benefited the middle- and working-class white voters who powered his victory. In fact, he has harmed them by sending their money to millionaires and billionaires (like his party buddy Jeffrey Epstein) via his tax scheme while, in the process, exploding our national deficit and debt. The only way he can keep his high levels of support among those voters is to con them by ginning up racial and cultural resentment.
Adam Serwer, perhaps the most insightful and important mainstream journalist writing about issues of identity, race, and American nationhood, explained beautifully what this whole affair really means:
Omar must be defended...because the nature of the president’s attack on her is a threat to all Americans—black or white, Jew or Gentile—whose citizenship, whose belonging, might similarly be questioned. This is not about Omar anymore, or the other women of color who have been told by this president to “go back” to their supposed countries of origin. It is about defending the idea that America should be a country for all its people. If multiracial democracy cannot be defended in America, it will not be defended elsewhere. What Americans do now, in the face of this, will define us forever.
Make no mistake, Donald Trump is responsible for the hate his remarks generate from his supporters. He wants that hate, he needs that hate, and he depends on that hate in order to make sure they are motivated to come out and support him. And if some of them cross a line and threaten violence (Omar has already received death threats) or even commit a violent act? Well, that’s not his problem or his responsibility. He’ll just say “I’m not happy with it” and move on with his reelection campaign. We have to make sure we are motivated to come out and defeat him.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)
Below is video of me on Politics Done Right with our own Egberto Willies discussing these matters in more detail.