Chants of “send her back” at a Trump rally in Greenville, North Carolina, have sent shockwaves through the country. Democrats have universally condemned the chants as well as the president’s tweets which incited them about Rep. Ilhan Omar. Even some Republicans have expressed deep concern over the chants, leading to the president himself saying he “felt a little bit badly [sic] about it.” He would not take credit for the chants of course, which he falsely claimed to have stopped soon after they began. Instead, he blamed his supporters themselves/ “I would say that I was not happy with it. I disagreed with it. But, again, I didn’t say that. They did.”

After tweeting that four freshman Congresswomen should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came,” most Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and even Ivanka Trump, either refused to condemn the tweets or voiced support for the president.

SLIDESHOW: DONALD TRUMP’S 30 CRAZIEST TWEETS

Now that the consequences of those tweets have played out, however, Republicans are getting cold feet. In a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence, Republican lawmakers expressed deep concerns over chants like those in Greenville, calling them “divisive” and “politically dangerous.”

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Rep. Mark Walker (R–North Carolina) voiced fears that this kind of language would catch on and ruin the Republicans come 2020. “We cannot be defined by this,” he said, adding that “this doesn’t need to be our campaign call.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R–California) echoed similar calls that chants like these have “no place in our party and no place in this country.”

This most recent Trump drama may spell the beginning of a racially tinged campaign, much like 2016, in which Trump baits his fanatical base, but distances himself enough to appeal to his more moderate supporters as well as independents.

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