By Thursday evening, even Donald Trump seemed to have sensed that he’d stepped in it.
He called reporters in and addressed the issue of his boisterous North Carolina rally the previous night. He wanted to explain, to excuse himself, to do what he does so well – to lie.
The president had been in high spirits Wednesday, as he always is when he can get out of the White House and harangue an arena full of his die-hard supporters with tales of his triumphs and complaints about the unappreciative citizens.
Naturally, the topic turned to the four Democratic members of Congress – all women of color – who have dubbed themselves “the Squad” and who have been giving him grief over his policies. They definitely get under his skin.
Do you notice just a wee bit of power disparity here?
The president is, well, The President. Executive head of the richest and most powerful nation on Earth. With an army, a navy, an air force and an enormous federal government at his disposal. He regularly deals with heads of state across the planet. He can do just about everything but make the tides run backward.
The Squad is composed of four freshmen members of the 435-member House of Representatives with little power beyond their individual votes.
But for some reason these four women drive our titular leader bonkers. Strong and opinionated women tend to have that effect on him. He’d been complaining about them for a week. And especially about one of them, Rep. Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia whose family fled that nation’s civil war for a refugee camp when she was eight and who came to this country when she was just 12.
In fact, Trump repeatedly asserted – without a scintilla of evidence that anyone can find – that she has voiced support for al-Qaida. That – a vicious and especially reprehensible charge – not only isn’t true, it makes her a potential target, and she’s been receiving death threats.
For close to a week, Trump had been exhorting the four to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came” rather than remain in the United States.
Omar is a naturalized citizen, and the other three of the women were born in the United States. One would have thought that Trump, with all the resources at his disposal, could have learned that before suggesting they should vamoose – but then he’s not a big detail guy. Or big on the concept of “truth.”
Anyway, he was rehashing his difficulties with the four women to his North Carolina worshippers with his by now routine rhetoric – “If they don’t like it (this country), tell ‘em to leave it” and “Congresswomen … have an obligation to love their country” and “They have such hatred. Such hatred.” In one tweet, he’d earlier said, “Let them get out NOW.”
He complained especially of the “un-American” Omar. And so, to absolutely no one’s surprise, his audience got into the spirit of it all.
“Send her home!” went the loud “spontaneous” chant, reminiscent of his big hit, “Lock her up,” four years ago. “Send her home! Send her home!”
And our American president, faced with this most un-American sentiment, just stood there, surveying the crowd with that faint smirk he wears so effectively. After about 13 seconds – and anyone who has struggled through a public speech can tell you that 13 seconds is an eternity – when the crowd died down, Trump resumed his speech. No comment on the chant, no admonition to his fans, just more of his complaints about his life being so unfair.
But the chants didn’t go unnoticed. And once more Republicans were left to answer for the president – to explain, to make apologies – or simply to remain mute. And not all, this time, were willing.
By Thursday even Trump’s wife and daughter were said to be among the small but growing number of Republicans who had complained about those chants, about his resurrecting that old “love it or leave it” slogan that had done so much to advance the Republicans’ interests in the Vietnam War era.
Some of the GOP criticisms were fairly muted, but those not running for office were less constrained.
One such critic particularly amused me. Joe Walsh – a one-term Illinois Republican congressman from Illinois – who was so obnoxious himself that Twitter once suspended him – condemned the president’s behavior: “ ‘Send her back, send her back’ is ugly. It’s ignorant. It’s dangerous. And it’s un-American. It’s flat out bigotry. And every Republican should condemn this bigotry immediately. Stop this now.”
Trump was startled. He’s so used to getting away with his impolitic talk and behavior, his rudeness, crudeness and incivility. Hence his brief remarks to the press.
“I disagree with it,” Trump said of the chant late Thursday. “I felt a little bit badly about it. . . . I started speaking very quickly” to stop it. But the video showed differently – as the network anchors were quick to point out to us. They, too, must be a little tired of being savaged by the oaf in the White House.
Does this mean that we’re in for an era of a kinder, gentler Trump who, chastised, will now learn to constrain his worst impulses, his joy in attacking others, his apparent inability to tell the truth? His determination to degrade the office of the presidency?
Oh, don’t be silly. Donald Trump is one nasty leopard who will never change his spots. But it is fun to watch him, for once, squirm.
And Ilhan Omar herself responded to our most un-presidential president with elegance, quoting a stanza of a cherished Maya Angelou poem, “And Still I Rise.”
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
She and the rest of the women will be just fine. I’m less sure I can say that about Donald Trump.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)