Sanders fundraises for Omar after ‘send her back’ chants

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent out a fundraising email on Thursday that would split donations with Rep. Ilhan Omar, the subject of a “send her back” chant from a crowd of people attending President Trump’s rally on Wednesday night.

“Can you split a $2.70 contribution between Ilhan Omar’s re-election campaign and our campaign for president?” Sanders wrote in the email. “Send a message that we will fight back against Trump’s racism.”

Sanders also shared a photo of himself and Omar (D-Mich.) eating dinner together after “the news came through about the Trump rally.”

Sanders said he was joining the freshman lawmaker, her daughter and other members of Congress last night with the group heard about the chant.

{mosads} “To my surprise, Ilhan was pretty unfazed. Sadly, as she told me, she has been dealing with this kind of hatred and racism for a long time,” Sanders said. “And she knows, as we do, that Trump is a demagogue doing what he does best: dividing and conquering through hate.”

Sanders asked supporters to “ensure her voice is with us in Congress for a long time to come,” slamming Trump on policy issues like health care and tax reform and saying he wanted to “divide the country up based on the color of our skin, our religion, where we were born or our sexual orientation.”  

The crowd at the Wednesday rally for Trump’s 2020 campaign began the “send her back” chant after Trump criticized Omar during his speech. The attack followed Trump’s tweets Sunday calling for progressive congresswomen to “go back” where they came from.

Trump told reporters he “was not happy with” the chant and that he disagreed with it at the White House Thursday, but he allowed the chant to continue on Wednesday without doing anything to try to quiet it.

Trump said Thursday that he “started speaking very quickly” to end the chants, but he paused for 14 seconds as the crowd cheered the phrase during the rally.