President Donald Trump claimed Thursday he “was not happy” with the crowd at his campaign rally for chanting “send her back,” after he had goaded the North Carolina audience with a fiery attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar.

"I was not happy with it. I disagree with it. But again, I didn't say that. They did. But I disagree with it," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, adding that he “started speaking very quickly” in an attempt to silence the rally attendees.


Prior to the audience at Greenville's East Carolina University breaking into their chant Wednesday night, the president tore into Omar, mischaracterizing past controversial statements by the Minnesota Democrat related to the 9/11 terror attacks and Al Qaeda that conservatives have seized upon in recent months.

Just before the incendiary refrain broke out, Trump accused Omar of having "a history of launching vicious, anti-Semitic screeds," and then silently gazed out over the crowd for roughly 15 seconds until the cheers of "send her back" abated.

"It was quite a chant, and I felt a little bit badly about it," Trump said on Thursday, later hailing the number of supporters inside the "packed arena" and boasting of the "tremendous support" and "great energy" enjoyed by the Republican Party.

"I say there is far more energy on the right than there is on the left," he said, adding, "I think we have far more support than they do and I think we have far more energy than they do. And we’re going to have a very interesting election. But I was not happy when I heard that chant."


The chant has been condemned by a growing number of Republican lawmakers, with House GOP leadership conveying their concerns to Vice President Mike Pence during a meeting Thursday morning.

But the disavowal from Trump contrasts sharply with days of similar racist rhetoric he has leveled against Omar and three other freshman progressive House Democrats — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — beginning Sunday with his tweets urging the U.S. citizens and women of color to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."

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Although those posts resulted in the House approving a resolution Tuesday formally rebuking the president, Trump has refused to relent in his broadsides against the lawmakers, and congressional Republicans have joined with him in decrying the congresswomen's liberal agenda. The North Carolina rally marked the most explosive chapter yet in the ongoing feud.

Questioned Thursday as to why the crowd began chanting, Trump said "you'd have to ask them," and told reporters to "go there, go to North Carolina, and you ask the people why they said that."


But appearing again in the Oval Office less than an hour later alongside Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Trump asserted that the crowd was made up of "people that love our country," and argued that the four congresswomen "should be more positive than they are."

"There is such hatred. They have such hatred," Trump said. "I have seen statements that they made with such hatred toward our country. And I don't think that's a good thing. They should embrace our country. They should love our country. And things would be a lot better."

Omar, a Muslim refugee from Somalia who has been a citizen since she was 17, slammed Trump on Thursday for "spewing his fascist ideology on stage," and told reporters in the Capitol that "here in the United States, dissent is patriotic."

"I want to make that sure every single person who is in this country, who is aspiring to become part of the American fabric, understands that nothing this president says should be taken to heart," Omar said. "We are Americans as much as everyone else. This is our country, and we are where we belong."