Alwaght- Ilhan Omar, US Muslim Congresswoman, says she has received an influx of death threats since Donald Trump shared an edited video on Twitter that featured images of the 9/11 terrorist attack with Omar’s comments spliced in between.
On Saturday, Trump shared the video suggesting that Omar, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Minnesota, was dismissive of the 9/11 attack.
Omar put out a statement Sunday night, detailing what she has faced since the Republican president posted the video, including “an increase in direct threats on my life.”
She also said, "Violent crimes and other acts of hate by right-wing extremists and white nationalists are on the ride in this country and around the world. We can no longer ignore that they are being encouraged by the occupant of the highest office in the land."
We are all Americans. This is endangering lives. It has to stop. pic.twitter.com/gwB2kDUIRp
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) April 15, 2019
In the hours after Trump attacked Omar, top Democrats in the US Congress strongly condemned Trump and other Republicans for attacking Omar over comments she made that seemingly minimized the 9/11 attacks, which were a series of strikes in the US that killed nearly 3,000 people and caused about $10 billion worth of property and infrastructure damage.
The video spliced news footage of 9/11 with a clip from a speech Omar gave last month in which she described the terror attack as “some people did something.”
WE WILL NEVER FORGET! pic.twitter.com/VxrGFRFeJM
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019
In Omar’s speech, given to a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, she said Muslims had “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.”
Omar, who came to the US from Somalia as a refugee and became one of the first Muslim women in Congress, thanked supporters for standing “against an administration that ran on banning Muslims from this country.”
