President Trump made the right decision to move on with his speech when “send her back” chants broke out at a campaign rally overnight, according to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
“You want to dislike the president so much, you’re going to accuse him of trying to do something he did not do. He moved on in the speech, he never joined in in it, and you want to try to hold him accountable for something in a big audience?” the California Republican asked reporters on Thursday. “I think that’s an unfair position.”
McCarthy, a Trump ally, denied GOP lawmakers were being hypocritical in criticizing the chants, which he said were started by a small group in the crowd attending the event in Greenville, North Carolina, while refusing to call out the president for his “go back” tweets. The leader praised the president’s reaction and then contrasted it with the House Democrats’ lack of response to members of their own conference introducing a resolution this week reaffirming the right to support the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
The chants erupted at the rally late Wednesday as Trump accused Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar of having “a history of launching vicious anti-Semitic screeds.” Omar, who was born in Somalia and moved to America at age 12, introduced the pro-BDS resolution. She, along with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, have received national media attention this week after the president insinuated on Twitter that they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.” Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib were born in the U.S.
McCarthy on Thursday also slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues for their handling of her floor speech this week in which she called Trump a “racist” for his comments, a personality attack in violation of the chamber’s rules. He said it was an example of Pelosi behaving like the rules didn’t apply to her.
“This House has changed a lot in a short amount of time, but also the Democratic Party has changed a great deal to become a socialist democratic party,” McCarthy said.