Rep. Ilhan Omar said she’s increasingly become the target death threats in the wake of President Donald Trump tweeting a controversial video that purportedly shows the Muslim lawmaker dismissing the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“This is endangering lives,” Omar said Sunday in a statement. “It has to stop.”
The Minnesota Democrat’s statement was followed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that she had taken steps to ensure the congresswoman’s safety as well as for the call for Trump to take down the video, which he tweeted Friday with the accompanying message, “We will never forget!”
The video tweeted by Trump shows Omar speaking last month at an event for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) about the struggles Muslims have faced in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks.
“For far too long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen and, frankly, I’m tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it,” said Omar, one of the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress. “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to civil liberties.”
Omar accused the president of trying to incite extremists into acts of violence by posting the video out of context.
“Violent crimes and other acts of hate by right-wing extremists and white nationalists are on the rise in this country and around the world,” she said in her statement. “We can no longer ignore that they are being encouraged by the occupant of the highest office in the land.”
