Lara Trump Distances President from ‘Send Her Back’ Chant, Forgets Her Own Possible Role In Instigating It

Lara Trump Distances President from ‘Send Her Back’ Chant, Forgets Her Own Possible Role In Instigating It

Presidential daughter-in-law Lara Trump spent a few minutes on Varney & Co. Friday morning playing down the “Send her back” chant that broke out at the president’s rally in Greenville, North Carolina on Wednesday night. What she did not mention is that she played her own part in getting the crowd primed to say exactly what it said.

Lara told Varney guest host Ashley Webster that the crowd started the chant on its own and “it wasn’t the whole crowd, it was a couple of people right there in the front.” Which, if you watch video of that moment, you know it sounds like quite a lot more than just “a couple of people” joining in. Nonetheless, Lara distanced the president from it, saying that “he wasn’t the one chanting it.”

But Lara herself had been one of the warm-up speakers before the presidential main act, and her own speech followed the same path. After calling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “the de facto leader” of the Democratic party, she ran through a whole false list of the positions she claims the Democrats hold (“40-week abortions,” “full government control of every aspect of your life”) and added:

“We love our country, and guess what? If you don’t love our country, the president said it. You can leave. Right? We don’t need you.”

Then the president took the stage, mentioned Ilhan Omar (a member of AOC’s insipidly-nicknamed “Squad”) and the crowd broke into the “Send her back” chant.

Lara Trump may not think there is anything racist here. But telling people of color to “go back where they came from” is an old racist trope, one that has been around in America for centuries. If you pump up a partisan crowd by naming women of color and then accusing them of being un-American and telling them to leave the country if they don’t like it, you cannot then pull some sort of innocent naif routine to deny there is any sort of racist angle.

Well, you can. But it’s transparently dishonest.

Watch the videos above, via Fox Business Network and RSBN.

 

Gary Legum

Gary Legum has written about politics and culture for Independent Journal Review, Salon, The Daily Beast, Wonkette, AlterNet and McSweeney's, among others. He currently lives in his native state of Virginia.

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