Rep. Ilhan Omar’s GOP opponent goes on wild Facebook rant after being banned from Twitter
You would think that after being permanently banned by Twitter for posting multiple suggestions that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — the woman that Danielle Stella hopes to beat in the general election next year if she wins the Republican primary — be executed for treason if the baseless rumors that Stella was accusing her of were true, then the GOP hopeful would be contrite and acknowledge that perhaps she had gone too far.
Instead, Stella doubled down on the social media platform where she was still allowed to post, penning a lengthy Facebook jeremiad defending her Twitter posts and refusing to back down from her insistence that Representative Omar should be put to death if the allegations against her are true.
Stella’s original offending tweets have been removed from Twitter, but media accounts have preserved her words:
“If it is proven @IlhanMN passed sensitive info to Iran, she should be tried for #treason and hanged,” the aspiring Republican congressional candidate tweeted.
She followed up her tweet with a link to a blog post about her comment with an image of a stick figure on the gallows.
The accusation of treason that Stella is referring to is the thoroughly discredited right-wing conspiracy theory that Congresswoman Omar was recruited by the Qatari government to pass intelligence info to Qatar and Iran.
The accusations fit the pattern by the Trump administration to accuse its opponents of exactly the type of compromising entanglements with foreign governments that they themselves have been alleged to have been involved with — whether it’s the current Ukraine scandal or the secretive relationship with Saudi Arabia and its murderous regime resplendent with oil wealth.
In her Facebook defense of her offending tweets, Stella attacked “the angry liberal mob” whose sensitivities she feels led to her ban from Twitter.
“To clarify, I said, ‘If it is proven [Omar] passed sensitive info to Iran, she should be tried for treason and hanged,'” Stella wrote.
“Treason is the only thing mentioned in the constitution for the death penalty, punishable by hanging or firing squad. I believe all involved should be thoroughly investigated.”
“I did not threaten anyone. If you are calling it a threat—you believe that individual is guilty, and therefore it is not a threat, it’s treason. You and the fake news #MSM [mainstream media] are lying by calling it lynching or terroristic threats.”
Stella goes on to make a statement that she may come to regret once all of the testimony in the House impeachment hearings is finally completed.
“I believe all traitors to our Country need to be tried for their many crimes. I’ve been outspoken about HRC crime family, BH0, S0R0S and others as well,” the GOP politician said.
Her references to the Hillary Rodham Clinton “crime family’ and George Soros betray the fact that Stella drinks deep from the conservative media fountain of false propaganda, but she ignores the fact that her staunch advocacy for applying the lethal legal penalty for treason swings both ways and could even more easily be used to punish Donald Trump for his increasingly obvious betrayal of our nation’s Constitution.
As for Representative Omar’s response to Stella’s social media calls for what amounts to her lynching, she posted this reaction on Twitter yesterday:
This is the natural result of a political environment where anti-Muslim dogwhistles and dehumanization are normalized by an entire political party and its media outlets.
Violent rhetoric inevitably leads to violent threats, and ultimately, violent acts. https://t.co/tn6SRFYGmp
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 29, 2019
The violent rhetoric of the Republican party under Donald Trump may yet come back to haunt them.
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether Danielle Stella’s Twitter ban sinks her candidacy in the Republican primary for Congresswoman Omar’s current seat or only makes her more popular with a GOP base that is equally brainwashed by Fox News and right-wing talk radio.
You can read Danielle Stella’s defensive Facebook post in its entirety below.
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Original reporting by Tareq Haddad at Newsweek.
