At a Donald Trump rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Monday, the MAGA crowd chanted, “Send them back,” referring to the Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrant community.
“The fact is and I’ll say it now, you have to get them the hell out,” said Trump preceding the chant in his 90-minute remarks.
This is a tired—and sad—story for Americans who, even if they have never attended a rally, have been subjected to them in the political consciousness for years.
It doesn’t matter that these Haitian residents are legal immigrants. What matters, it seems, is that they are different from most of those who had lived in the town for years—they’re from a different culture with a different skin color. And that othering is what attracts the fury of Trump and his MAGA crowd.
This is far from the first time the former president has targeted his foes, both political opponents and the people he’s campaigning to represent as president.
Trump has historically targeted people of color. In a 2019 rally while president, MAGA rally goers chanted “Send her back,” about Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, the first Somali American in Congress who is also Muslim. The chant happened after Trump misrepresented comments from Omar to make her sound like an al-Qaida sympathizer.
In 2016, in reference to keeping Mexicans out of the U.S. “Build that wall” was a common chant and one that Trump still enjoys using.
Trump has gone after Haitians before. In 2018, in a meeting with a group of bipartisan senators, Trump “asked why America would want immigrants from ‘all these shithole countries’ and that the U.S. should have more people coming in from places like Norway,” NBC News reported. Trump referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and an assortment of African nations as “shithole countries.”
This is the dark, angry, xenophobic, nationalist aspect of Trump’s political brand he’s formed over a decade. It’s where he is most comfortable, being bombastic and cruel. And it’s why he has turned American politics into a grim, primitive circus.
Trump rallies are known for their frenzied, mob-like behavior. You know, like the behavior that resulted in a terror attack by whipping MAGA supporters up into a rage and getting them to storm the Capitol. There the chant was to “hang Mike Pence” because the vice president had the nerve to allow democracy and accept the electoral votes that proved Joe Biden had won the presidency.
This disturbing rhetoric is not just a “good time.” It leads to tangible political violence. Earlier this month during the debate, after Trump amplified the lie that Haitians were eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio, children had to evacuate schools due to bomb threats being sent in.
This shows how much impact a week or two of cat-and-dog-eating rhetoric can have. And as reported Monday by Oliver Willis for Daily Kos, Trump supporters are more likely to double down on a lie if it’s, in fact, called out as a lie.
It’s mean. It’s nasty. It’s dangerous. It’s un-American. It needs to stop.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that the Haitians targeted by Trump are legal immigrants.
