This story isn’t going away any time soon.
Donald Trump has blamed his supporters for starting a “send her back” chant during a rally for his 2020 presidential campaign on Wednesday night.
It began after Trump said that Omar looks down on “hard working Americans”, saying that “ignorance is pervasive in many parts of this country”, before stating that Omar has a history of launching “vicious, anti-Semitic screeds”.
Trump has received heavy criticism since the incident took place, and he has since put the blame on his supporters who were in attendance.
“I disagree with it,” the president told reporters a day later in the Oval Office, according to USA Today. “I wasn’t happy with that message.”
“I didn’t say that,” Trump said, referring to the “send her back” chant. “They did.”
Although he did not say those on Wednesday night, he did seem to imply it in a series of tweets posted last weekend.
He was asked why he didn’t stop his supporters from chanting those words, to which he replied: “I think I did. I started speaking very quickly.”
Omar responded to the crowd’s chants on her own Twitter page:
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.-Maya Angelou https://t.co/46jcXSXF0B
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) July 18, 2019
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