Trump Attacked Ilhan Omar on Twitter With an Islamophobic Video

From Esquire

Just a week after a Trump supporter was arrested for threatening to murder Representative Ilhan Omar, the president tweeted an Islamophobic video accusing the congresswoman of minimizing the September 11th terrorist attacks.

The video focused on a moment from Omar’s March remarks at a Council on American-Islamic Relations event. In her speech, she discussed the racism American Muslims have faced post-9/11 and said that CAIR was founded after the attacks "because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties." (Omar was mistaken as to the date of the organization's founding-CAIR was actually formed in 1994.)

Omar's comments sparked outrage in right-wing media, which zeroed in on the phrase "some people did something" as being insufficiently reverent of the devastation of the 9/11 attacks. The New York Post’s Thursday cover was a graphic photo of the Twin Towers exploding in flames over the headline, "Here’s Your Something." And in the video Trump pinned to his Twitter feed late Friday, Ilhan’s quote is cut against footage from the attacks.

The president's attack comes on the heels of the arrest of a New York Trump supporter for allegedly threatening to "put a bullet in [Omar’s] fucking skull" during a call to the congresswoman’s office. The accused, Patrick Carlineo, also allegedly called Omar "a fucking terrorist" and told the FBI that he "hates radical Muslims in government."

Some high-profile Democrats quickly condemned Trump’s tweet, including Omar’s fellow freshman representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. "Members of Congress have a duty to respond to the President’s explicit attack today," AOC tweeted. "[Ilhan Omar’s] life is in danger. For our colleagues to be silent is to be complicit in the outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress."

Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren also made statements via Twitter. "Ilhan Omar is a leader with strength and courage," tweeted Sanders. "She won't back down to Trump's racism and hate, and neither will we. The disgusting and dangerous attacks against her must end."

"The President is inciting violence against a sitting Congresswoman-and an entire group of Americans based on their religion," wrote Warren. "It's disgusting. It's shameful. And any elected leader who refuses to condemn it shares responsibility for it."

As of Saturday morning, #IStandWithIlhan was trending on Twitter. But not all Democrats were full-throated in their defense of the congresswoman. Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized the president for invoking 9/11 for political profit, but did not personally defend Omar or condemn Islamophobia.

The Minnesota congresswoman has been subjected to multiple Islamophobic attacks since her 2018 election. Last month, a sign at an event hosted by the Republican Party of West Virginia showcased a bigoted right-wing meme linking Omar to the 9/11 attacks. And Fox News host Jeanine Pirro was suspended from her show for two weeks in March for suggesting that Omar may not be loyal to the constitution because she wears a hijab.

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