Trump Uses 9/11 Footage To Advance Right-Wing Attacks On Ilhan Omar
President Donald Trump tweeted a video Friday fanning the flames of the recent right-wing uproar over comments Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) made about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“WE WILL NEVER FORGET!” Trump tweeted with the video, which alternates between an out-of-context remark Omar made during a speech last month and footage of the terrorist attacks, an attempt to characterize her as dismissive of the tragedy.
WE WILL NEVER FORGET! pic.twitter.com/VxrGFRFeJM
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019
It’s unclear whether Trump’s administration made the video or if he harvested it from another account.
Trump joins a chorus of conservative media voices that have tried to paint Omar saying “some people did something” during that speech as being flippant about Sept. 11. In reality, Omar was speaking about why the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) ramped up its efforts to combat Islamophobia in the wake of the attacks.
“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,” Omar, a freshman lawmaker who is one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, said during a speech to CAIR members.
The video Trump posted includes footage of the planes crashing into the towers despite broadcast networks moving away from showing that specific imagery in recent years. Research has shown that just watching footage of the Sept. 11 attacks can be enough to trigger clinically diagnosable stress responses in people, even those who were nowhere near the attacks when they happened.
Several high-profile lawmakers called out Trump’s actions. Fellow freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) argued that Trump was putting Omar’s life in danger.
Members of Congress have a duty to respond to the President’s explicit attack today.@IlhanMN’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.
We must speak out.
“First they came...” pic.twitter.com/ygOX1vhE9j— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 12, 2019
Ilhan Omar is a leader with strength and courage. She won't back down to Trump's racism and hate, and neither will we. The disgusting and dangerous attacks against her must end.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 13, 2019
Enough is enough. No more silence, with NY Post and now Trump taking Ilhan’s words out of context to incite violence toward her, it’s time for more Dems to speak up. Clearly the GOP is fine with this shameful stunt, but we cannot stand by.
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) April 12, 2019
Trump has repeatedly put a target on Omar, a frequent recipient of far-right attacks attempting to paint her as a foreigner who sympathizes with Muslim extremists. Some have gone as far as to connect her to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks via an inflammatory poster hung up in the West Virginia House of Delegates.
Last week, Trump mocked her during a speech just one day after a man proclaiming that he “loves the president” was arrested for allegedly threatening to kill her.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
