'Send Her Back' Is Trump's Most Honest Campaign Slogan
It felt like President Trump’s rally in Greenville, North Carolina, on Wednesday night was probably going to be an ugly one. It was grotesque. The East Carolina University arena was pulsing with white nationalist synergy through the president’s time on stage, provided a horrifying glimpse of what the next 16 months are going to look like.
And, perhaps more hauntingly, what they’re going to sound like.
As expected, Trump continued his attacks on Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), the four congresswomen of color the president has spent the week demonizing as un-American after they made comments critical of his administration’s immigration policy. When Trump mentioned Omar, his liberal bogeyman du jour, the audience began chanting “SEND HER BACK!,” a chilling successor to the “LOCK HER UP!” chants directed at Hillary Clinton throughout the 2016 campaign and beyond. This time, the call is not merely to jail a political opponent, but to forcefully expel an American citizen from the country.
Plenty have howled about how damaging politically it was for Trump to tweet on Sunday that Omar and her colleagues should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” The same people warned of the consequences of Trump’s countless racist provocations as he geared up for his first run at the White House. He kept it up then, and it shouldn’t be surprising not only that he has double, triple, and quadrupled down on his recent attacks against the congresswomen, but that he appears poised to turn the issue into the beating heart of his 2020 campaign.
Xenophobia is Trump’s gin card, and by virtue of tuning in to watch Fox News rail against Omar and her colleagues on Sunday morning, he’s stumbled into a fresh way to play it ahead of 2020. Though some public-facing conservatives have bristled at his comments (and many others have excused them or supported them), Trump knew his base would have his back. “It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me,” Trump said on Monday when asked if he was worried about his attacks energizing white nationalists.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-white-nationalism-rally-was-ilhan-omar-860480/