Rep. Ilhan Omar says Trump has created 'monsters' who are 'terrorizing' Jews and Muslims

(Image credit: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

published 30 April 2019

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Tuesday accused President Trump and his allies of doing "everything they can to distance themselves and misinform the public from the monsters that they created" who are now "terrorizing the Jewish community and the Muslim community."

Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, told a crowd in Washington, D.C., that the suspect in Saturday's shooting at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in Southern California has also been accused of trying to bomb a nearby mosque. "I can't ever speak of Islamophobia and fight for Muslims if I am not willing to fight against anti-Semitism," she declared. Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, she added, are "two sides of the same coin of bigotry."

Omar has been criticized by Trump, conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and some in her own party for comments that they said sounded anti-Semitic. She slammed Trump for his "vile attacks" against her, and said she figured out why so many people are coming after her. "The thing that upsets the occupant in the White House, his goons in the Republican Party, many of our colleagues in the Democratic Party is that they can't stand, they cannot stand, that a refugee, a black woman, an immigrant, a Muslim shows up in Congress thinking she's equal to them," she said.

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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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