Wednesday during an appearance on CNN’s “Newsroom,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) responded to an attack from President Donald Trump, who earlier at a rally questioned Omar’s judgment and predicted Omar would contribute to his forthcoming Electoral College victory in Minnesota.
Omar said she anticipated her congressional district turning out in Minnesota on November 3 to prevent him from winning the state’s 10 electoral votes.
“The president clearly loves to prey on people’s fears,” she said. “He spreads the disease of hate everywhere he goes. These cult rallies he holds across the country are now being fueled by fear. And it is no surprise that he is so fearful of winning Minnesota that he has to resort to this hate because what he knows is that the Democratic power in Minnesota runs through turnout in the fifth congressional district. And we are going to make sure not only does he not win Minnesota but that he doesn’t get back to the White House.”
She went on to criticize Trump for his remarks and claimed he was doing so because she was a female and an immigrant.
“I mean, it shows, really, the ways in which our country has descended into a place where you are being attacked for being an immigrant,” Omar said. “You’re being attacked for being Muslim. And you’re being attacked even for being a woman in a political sphere. You can see just how low not only Republicans but even their base has gotten. And when you have attacks coming from the highest office in this country, it is completely reshaping the societal outlooks of our country, and it’s quite shameful. I mean, you know, when I think about the ways in which this president has run our country amok, run our laws amok, you have to remind yourself that he must have really quite missed a step in Government 101 because he, you know, asks people, ‘How does somebody like Ilhan get to tell us how hour country is run?'”
“Well, somebody like me gets to tell you how our country is run because that’s mandated in the Constitution,” she continued. “I’m a member of Congress, and that’s what members of Congress get to do per Article I of our Constitution,” she continued. “And I get to do that because I was honored by the voters of the Minnesota congressional fifth district with their votes. And I like to remind the president and his base, you know, I won my election in 2018 with more votes than 427 members of the House. And we did that by reaching out to people, having conversations, building relationships, and speaking to the issues that they were being faced — whether it was brutality within our policing system, whether it was the social ills that existed, that has made some of them not achieve the promise of America, or whether it was talking about economic opportunities that can exist for them.”
“And we now have a president that has been responsible, truly, for the death of 200,000 Americans because he did not figure out how to cohesively lead our country while we are dealing with a pandemic, and that includes my own father,” Omar added. “And we have a president has that is overseeing one of the most financial devastations our country has ever seen. And we are dealing with a clear uprising across the country where people are fed up and are ready for systematic change. And instead of addressing those issues, he resorts to racist attacks and attacking immigrants. I mean, this is a president who doesn’t recognize that his own mother and grandfather were immigrants, that four of his children were born to women who were immigrants. Not only is he a racist, but he’s a racist xenophobic because he’s not just against immigration — he’s just against immigrants who look like me.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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