Footage of John McCain correcting a racist supporter goes viral following 'send her back' chants at Trump rally

Donald Trump's racially aggravated attacks on four Democratic congresswomen who he told to 'go back to their own countries' has been one of the biggest and most controversial talking points of his presidency to date.

In the wake of his comments, aimed at the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, Trump supporters have adopted the president's rhetoric, which led to the unsavoury chants of 'send her back' at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday.

Although Trump has tried to distance himself from those chants, there is no escaping the fact that he could have easily stopped them. With this in mind, people have recalled a moment from the 2008 presidential election between Barack Obama and John McCain.

In the lead up to the election, Republicans had done everything within their power to smear Obama's name, including a suggestion that he wasn't born in the US. At one rally for McCain, a supporter of the former congressman, who died last year, tells the politician why she doesn't trust Obama.

I can't trust Obama. I have read about him and he's - he's an Arab.

Within moments of hearing this McCain, takes the microphone back from the woman and explains why she is wrong to brand Obama in such a way.

No Ma'am. He's a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have a few disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about. He's not. Thank you.

If social media would have been bigger in 2008, you can almost guarantee that this clip would have gone viral, but it has since found new life during the Trump presidency.

Although McCain and Obama were opponents they didn't resort to insults, which is a far cry from the type of language that Trump has adopted even before he entered the White House.

Following Trump's recent comments, people have begun to share this clip of McCain again, as well as other moments from the Republican, which highlight what a decent politician should act like.

McCain, who was something in the thorn of the side of Trump, wasn't universally praised for his intervention against the woman's comments. Many others have pointed out that it was problematic of him to tell the woman that Obama was a 'decent family man' after she called him an 'Arab', as if suggesting that just because someone is Arabic, that they can't be any of those things.

HT Business Insider