Anti-Trump Hollywood actor Tom Arnold professed his undying emotions Tuesday for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who’s spent her short tenure in Washington advocating radical far-left policies and pushing antisemitic tropes, saying he would be “lucky” if he and the “Squad” member “[fell] in love.”
“She’s beautiful, smart & brave. If I’m lucky we’ll fall in love,” Arnold wrote on Twitter of Ilhan Omar, before launching into a defense of the Minnesota Democrat for promoting the actor’s remarks justifying Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) neighbor’s vicious assault against the libertarian-leaning lawmaker last year.
“Rand Paul is a horrible neighbor a terrible Senator & worse human. Donald Trump has retweeted Nazi’s. You’ve never called out Donald Trump. Stop bullying tiny brown women coward. Time to call out big fat white guys,” the actor implored.
On Monday, Omar (D-MN) retweeted a tweet by Arnold fantasizing about Paul facing another violent attack after the Kentucky Republican told Breitbart News that he would purchase the freshman congresswomen her a plane ticket to return to her native Somalia to refamiliarize herself with the dismal conditions in the African country.
“Well, she came here and we fed her, we clothed her, she got welfare, she got [schooling], she got healthcare, and then, lo and behold, she has the honor of actually winning a seat in Congress, and she says we’re a terrible country? I think that’s about as ungrateful as you can get,” Paul told Breitbart News reporter Alana Mastrangelo at the Turning Point USA Teen Summit in Washington, D.C., last week.
“And so — I’m willing to contribute to buy her a ticket to go visit Somalia,” he continued, “and I think she can look and maybe learn a little bit about the disaster that is Somalia — that has no capitalism, has no God-given rights guaranteed in a constitution, and has about seven different tribes that have been fighting each other for the last 40 years.”
“And then maybe after she’s visited Somalia for a while,” Paul added, “she might come back and appreciate America more.”
In response to Paul’s comments, Intercept columnist Mehdi Hasan attempted to fact-check the senator, pushing the long-debunked claim that President Donald Trump’s travel ban is a ban on Muslims from entering the U.S. Though several of the banned countries have Muslim majorities, some of them have citizens of others faiths, including Christianity and Judaism.
Arnold replied to Hasan’s criticism: “Imagine being Rand Paul’s next door neighbor and having to deal with @RandPaul lying cowardly circular whiney bullcrap about lawn clippings. No wonder he ripped his toupee off.” Omar then retweeted the actor’s comments to her 1.4 million followers.
In June 2018, Paul’s neighbor, Rene Boucher, was sentenced to 30 days in prison for attacking him in a dispute over yard waste. Boucher pleaded guilty to assaulting a member of Congress, admitting to the jury that he was triggered by the senator stacking debris like sticks and leaves near their property line in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Paul suffered broken ribs from the attack. He was awarded $580,000 in damages for the violent incident.
Omar’s promotion of Arnold’s tweet sparked a flurry of condemnations from conservatives, including Donald Trump Jr., Rep. Lee Zeldin, (R-NY) and Sergio Gor, Paul’s spokesperson.
Omar has repeatedly sparked political firestorms for her anti-Israel comments and promotion of anti-Jewish tropes. In a 2012 tweet, Omar claimed Israel had “hypnotized the world.” The Minnesota Democrat suggested earlier this year that pro-Israel advocacy groups bribe members of Congress to support the Jewish state. Her remarks drew outrage from both Republicans and Democrats with Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on which Omar serves on, who said “Squad” members comments about the role of so-called “Jewish money” in U.S. politics “shocking.”
“Anti-Semitism in any form is unacceptable, and it’s shocking to hear a Member of Congress invoke the anti-Semitic trope of ‘Jewish money,’” Engel wrote in a statement. “I fully expect that when we disagree on the Foreign Affairs Committee, we can debate policy on the merits and never question members’ motives or resort to personal attacks. Criticism of American policy toward any country is fair game, but this must be done on policy grounds.”
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