Ilhan Omar fires back at Trump over his racist rally attacks
As the 2020 election draws closer, President Donald Trump’s rally behavior has grown increasingly ugly as he dials up the racism and white supremacist dog-whistling. Last night in Pennsylvania, he once again took aim at one of the right-wing’s boogeywoman — the fearless and eternally defiant Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).
Claiming that the Somali-born and Muslim Congresswoman is “telling us to how to run our country,” Trump again delved back into xenophobic and racist disparagement of her home country and viciously otherized her while his hooting and baying fans cheered.
Trump earlier tonight on Rep. Ilhan Omar: "She’s telling us how to run our country. How did you do where you came from? How was your country doing?" Really ugly stuff. (Not the point, clearly, but she fled Somalia as a refugee as a child.)
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 23, 2020
Never one to take Trump’s vitriol lying down, Ilhan Omar quickly fired back on Twitter, telling the president that in fact, she was forced to flee Somalia when she was just eight years old — and that it was now Trump who was behaving like an “eight-year-old.”
Firstly, this is my country & I am a member of the House that impeached you.
Secondly, I fled civil war when I was 8. An 8-year-old doesn’t run a country even though you run our country like one. https://t.co/zcKKjdC8ju
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) September 23, 2020
When the news broke on Wednesday that Trump blamed Black Americans for their own economic and political disenfranchisement, she again fired back at Trump, hammering him for “preying on fear” and “spreading a disease of hate.”
Trump preys on fear. He spreads a disease of hate.
Our communities are under attack from the highest office in the land.
It’s frustrating to fight for your own humanity. It’s infuriating to advocate for your own inherent worth as a person.
In solidarity, we will overcome. https://t.co/dvKHaQzKEe
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) September 23, 2020
Nobody knows how frustrating that fight is better than Ilhan Omar. On her first day in Washington, after leaving her training at the White House, a cab driver tried to snatch off her hijab and subjected her “to the most hateful, derogatory, Islamophobic, sexist taunts and threats she had ever experienced.”
From the earliest days of her short time in office, she has been accused of being a terrorist sympathizer, linked to the 9/11 terror attacks, and been the target of incessant smear campaigns, harassment, and death threats by prominent figures in the nation that gave her a home after fleeing Somalia’s endless civil war.
It cannot be understated how dangerous it is to have the President of the United States and his cronies engaging in this kind of racist fearmongering — and how uniquely courageous Omar is proving herself to be by refusing to back down in the face of old white terror.
Opinion columnist and former editor-in-chief of Occupy Democrats. He graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor's degree in history and political science. He now focuses on advancing the cause of social justice and equality in America.