A Republican congressman on Wednesday discouraged the crowd planning to attend President Trump’s upcoming rally in his Cincinnati-area district from repeating the “send her back” chants that captured national attention following the president’s last rally in North Carolina.
Representative Steve Chabot told the Associated Press that he’s hopeful the crowd will avoid attacking Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) in such personal terms during the Thursday night rally in downtown Cincinnati, but urged Trump to intervene if they do.
“I would discourage the crowd from doing anything inappropriate and I think saying something like that would be inappropriate,” Chabot said. “I would hope that the president would silence the crowd, tell them, ‘Hey, don’t do that, there’s no place for that. It’s not helpful, it’s not right.’”
Trump supporters drew the immediate condemnation of Democratic lawmakers and journalists after they chanted “Send Her Back” in reference to the Somali-born Omar during the rally in Greenville, North Carolina.
The chant came just days after Trump invited Omar and the progressive freshman lawmakers she’s allied with to carry out their desire for revolutionary political change in their home countries, despite three of them being native-born Americans.
A number of prominent Republicans joined Democrats in their condemnation of the chant. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the chant had “no place in our party and no place in this country” while Vice President Mike Pence suggested Trump would cut off the chant if it broke out during the Ohio rally.