Bernie Sanders: Trump should skip El Paso trip and work on his 'racist rhetoric'

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2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders urged President Trump to skip his planned trip to El Paso, so he could work on reforming his "racist rhetoric."

During an appearance on Sirus XM's "The Dean Obeidallah Show," Sanders, I-Vt., said if the president cared about the victims of the recent mass shootings, he would stay away from the cities altogether.

"It gives me no pleasure to say this, but we do have a president who is an overt racist, who is a sexist, who is a xenophobe ... who thinks that he can win votes by demonizing one group of people or another," he said.

Sanders added, “There is no question in my mind that his anti-immigrant sentiment and his racism create a climate where unstable people are capable of doing horrific deeds, as we saw in El Paso ... If the president is serious about wanting to do something, he should stay away from El Paso and what he should do right now is end this anti-immigrant rhetoric, his racist rhetoric.”

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Sanders also addressed Trump's public spat with Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and three of her congressional colleagues, including when Trump tweeted that the freshmen members of Congress should "go back where they came from."

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“You don’t tell four members of Congress to go back from where they came from, and then tell the American people that you're concerned about violence and you’re concerned about racism," he said.

"So I think if the president wants to do something that’s real, then he should just end that racist rhetoric that we’ve been hearing for years."