'Send her back', roar Donald Trump supporters

Donald Trump at a rally at Minges Coliseum in Greenville, North Carolina, on Wednesday. Pic /AFP

Greenville: Going after four non-white Democratic congresswomen one by one, a combative President Donald Trump turned his campaign rally into an extended dissection of the liberal views of the women of colour, deriding them for what he painted as extreme positions and suggesting they just get out.

"Tonight I have a suggestion for the hate-filled extremists who are constantly trying to tear our country down," Trump told the crowd in North Carolina, a swing state he won in 2016 and wants to claim again in 2020. "They never have anything good to say. That's why I say, 'Hey if you don't like it, let 'em leave, let 'em leave."

Eager to rile up his base with the some of the same kind of rhetoric he targeted at minorities and women in 2016, Trump declared Wednesday night, "I think in some cases they hate our country."

Trump's jabs were aimed at the self-described "squad" of four freshmen Democrats who have garnered attention since their arrival in January for their outspoken liberal views and distaste for Trump: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

All were born in the US except for Omar, who came to the US as a child after fleeing Somalia with her family. Omar came under the harshest criticism as Trump played to voters' grievances, drawing a chant from the crowd of "Send her back! Send her back!" She responded Wednesday night with a series of tweets, including one quoting Maya Angelou's defiant poem, "Still I Rise," with the words "You may shoot me with your words... But still, like air, I'll rise." "I am where I belong, at the people's house and you're just gonna have to deal!" she wrote in another.

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