President says he'd rather rallygoers not chant 'Send her back!'

CINCINNATI (AP) — President Donald Trump said he would "prefer" his supporters at a rally tonight don't engage in a "Send her back!" chant about a Somali-born congresswoman, after he faced widespread criticism for not doing more to stop the attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar at an event two weeks ago.

Speaking to reporters before leaving the White House for Cincinnati, Trump said he doesn't know whether they will chant anyway, or what his response would be if they do – adding that, regardless, he "loves" his political supporters.

"I don't know that you can stop people," Trump told reporters. "If they do the chant, we'll have to see what happens."

The chant about the Minnesota Democrat by a roaring Greenville, N.C., crowd last month rattled Republicans and raised the prospect of a 2020 presidential campaign increasingly fought along racial lines. It followed racist tweets Trump sent against Omar and three other first-term lawmakers of color, instructing them to get out of the U.S. "right now" and saying if the lawmakers "hate our country," they can go back to their "broken and crime-infested" countries.

Two weeks ago, Trump wavered in his response to the divisive cries, letting the chant roll at the rally, expressing disapproval about it the next day and later retreating from those concerns.

Since then, Trump has pushed ahead with incendiary tweets and a series of attacks on a veteran African-American congressman and his predominantly black district in Baltimore. Heightening the drama, Trump's Ohio rally will come on the heels of a pair of debates among the Democrats who want to replace him and will take place against a backdrop of simmering racial tension in the host city of Cincinnati.

All eyes will be watching both the Ohio crowd's behavior and how Trump reacts. Even his closest advisers seem uncertain as to what may transpire.

"If it happened again, he might make an effort to speak out about it," Vice President Mike Pence said recently.

Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, who represents a Cincinnati-area district, said Wednesday he hopes the crowd will avoid such chants this time, and he thinks Trump will react more quickly if does happen.

"I would discourage the crowd from doing anything inappropriate and I think saying something like that would be inappropriate," Chabot said. "I would hope that the president would silence the crowd, tell them: 'Hey, don't do that, there's no place for that. It's not helpful, it's not right.'"