Piers Morgan says Trump rally ‘bordered on fascism’

Piers Morgan, typically a defender of President Trump, says the president’s Wednesday night campaign rally crossed the line into racism “big time.”

“The President keeps insisting he’s not a racist, and I’ve repeatedly said that in the 13 years I’ve known him, I’ve personally never witnessed him being a racist,” Morgan wrote in a Daily Mail op-ed Thursday. “But since running for the White House, his inflammatory language has flirted ever closer to crossing the line into overt racism, and now he’s crossed that line. Big time.”

{mosads}“Let’s be very unambiguously clear: what happened in North Carolina last night was not just racist-fueled demagoguery but bordered on fascism.”

During the rally, when Trump renewed his attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Muslim woman who was born in Somalia, the crowd broke into a chant of “send her back.” 

“Some raised fists, some were just children. All of them seemed united in racist rage,” Morgan said. 

“There was the President of the United States whipping his supporters into a hyper-animated state of rage about a political opponent because of her ethnicity,” he added. 

Morgan said he had feared this reaction after Trump “so recklessly and offensively” tweeted Sunday telling a group of Democratic congresswomen to “go back” where they came from. 

The tweets were targeted at Democratic Reps. Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.). All four are women of color; only Omar was born outside of the U.S.

“But to actually watch and hear a large gathering of thousands of predominantly white Americans chanting such a blatant infamous racist trope about a democratically elected fellow American made me shudder. Then it made me angry,” Morgan said. “This should not be happening in modern America.”

Democrats quickly denounced Trump’s rally, as they had with his tweets. Morgan specifically quotes Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a 2020 presidential candidate, who responded to the rally by tweeting, “It’s vile, it’s cowardly, it’s xenophobic, it’s racist.” 

“And she’s right,” Morgan said. 

Some Republicans have spoken out against Trump’s rally, but, as with his tweets, few have gone so far as to call it racist.