MSNBC host Joe Scarborough sounded alarm on Friday over what he called political “ethnic cleansing” of those who disagree with President Trump in the wake of the “send her back” chant that erupted from the audience at Trump’s rally earlier this week in an attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
“Unlike some of those Republican members of Congress, I can dismiss Donald Trump for some of the stupid things he says and I can say, ‘Well you know what, the voters are going to have their say a year from now,’” Scarborough said on the “Morning Joe” on Friday morning.
“But when thousands of Americans and the audience chant ‘send her back’ to a member of Congress because of her color, because she’s a Muslim, or, just as frightening, Lindsey Graham says, ‘Oh, it’s because she doesn’t support Donald Trump,’ we are now talking about an ethnic cleansing politically of people who do not support our side,” he continued.
“If somebody that is critical of you or critical of me for suggesting that this sounded like a rally in Germany in the early 1930s, where people were chanting, ‘Send them back, send them back,’ when they were actually citizens of Germany, and in this case, citizens of the United States of America, if there is a better analogy for those who want to be critical today, I would love to hear it,” Scarborough told co-host Mika Brzezinski.{mosads}
Though the anchor and former GOP congressman noted that “nobody’s being killed, nobody’s being put on trains,” he went on to add that “there is no doubt that the argument that is coming from Donald Trump, and again, more frighteningly, from the crowd chanting it, is, ‘This is a white nation, who are these black women, who are these Muslims, to tell us how to run our country.’”
Trump has been under fire from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for the “send her back” chants.
Trump, who was also criticized over the weekend for telling the Somali American lawmaker and three other congresswomen of color to “go back” their home countries, sought to distance himself from the controversy by disavowing the chants later on Thursday.
“I was not happy with it. I disagree with it,” Trump told reporters.
When pressed about his failure to stop the chants, Trump said, “I think I did. I started speaking very quickly,” though video shows him allowing it to continue for several seconds before he continued his speech.
The House voted along party lines this week to condemn Trump’s original tweets as racist.