Following Donald Trump’s racist attacks over the weekend on which he doubled down Monday, Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar showed the president that she knows more about American values than he ever will.
In an interview following her press conference earlier in the day, the first Somali-American member of Congress reminded the president that America’s strength comes from diversity, not from spewing white nationalist attacks on minority members of Congress.
“Here in this country, we see everyone, we welcome everyone, and we remind people that they are valued,” she said. “We are not going to allow him to continue his throwing of the pile of garbage that constantly comes out of his mouth.”
Video:
“Does he know he is the president of the United States?” -Rep. Ilhan Omar quotes her 7-year-old child’s response to Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric. #ctl #p2 #maddow pic.twitter.com/wzLSC3sqEP
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) July 16, 2019
Rep. Omar said:
We were reminded, something that my 7-year-old says, ‘Does he know he is the president of the United States?’ We had to make sure to let him know that here in this country, we see everyone, we welcome everyone, and we remind people that they are valued. We are not going to allow him to continue his throwing of the pile of garbage that constantly comes out of his mouth that allows for the media to be distracted truly from delivering the kind of insight, investigation into the lawlessness that is of his administration. The constant human rights violations, the policies that are detrimental to our existence in this country and the harm that he is causing on a daily basis to our Constitution and the existence of our country.
Rep. Omar has been a U.S. citizen longer than Melania Trump
There was clearly no logic to Donald Trump’s racist attacks against Omar and three other female congresswomen of color – Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley.
The point wasn’t to make sense or make a fact-based argument, after all. It was to stir up the minority resentment that has fueled his campaign and motivated his supporters since day one.
But if the president wants to question whether someone is really an American based on the fact that they haven’t lived in the United States their whole life, he might want to take a look at his own family.
As The Huffington Post noted on Monday, citing comments by CNN’s Jake Tapper, Rep. Ilhan Omar has been a U.S. citizen longer than Melania Trump.
According to HuffPo, “Omar became a citizen in 2000 at the age of 17, while Melania Trump became a citizen six years later at the age of 36, a year after she married the future president.”
But as Rep. Omar said on Monday, it doesn’t matter what you look like, where you come from or how long you’ve been an American citizen; all men and women should be valued and treated equally in the United States of America.
Donald Trump – an entitled, self-centered, draft-dodging, lazy, racist, bully who uses the American flag as a political prop without knowing what it actually stands for – is the last person who should be setting the standards for what makes someone a patriot.
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