Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) ripped House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) Sunday for his response to comments made by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who suggested that her Democratic colleague was a suicide bomber.
"McCarthy is a liar and a coward. He doesn't have the ability to condemn the kind of bigoted, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric that are being trafficked by a member of his conference," Omar told co-host Jake Tapper during an appearance on CNN’s "State of the Union."
Asked why McCarthy does not have the ability to condemn Boebert's comments, Omar said, "because this is who [Republicans] are."
"And we have to be able to stand up to them, and we have to push them to reckon with the fact that their party right now is normalizing anti-Muslim bigotry," she continued.
The spat between Omar and Boebert comes after a video surfaced on social media last month showing the Republican making comments that a number of Democratic lawmakers slammed as Islamaphobic.
In the video, Boebert told a group of her supporters at a campaign event about being in an elevator with Omar, in which the Colorado congresswoman said she witnessed a police officer rush toward them "with fret all over his face" to try and stop the elevator door from closing.
"I look to my left and there she is: Ilhan Omar. And I said, 'Well, she doesn’t have a backpack. We should be fine,'" Boebert said in the video. "So we only had one floor to go and I was like eh, 'do I say it, do I not.' I looked over and I said, 'Oh look, the jihad squad decided to show up for work today.'"
Omar responded to the video on Twitter by saying that the incident never happened and that Boebert's comments were evidence of "Anti-Muslim bigotry."
Boebert later apologized for the comments she made in the video and had a phone call with Omar, as McCarthy pointed out Friday when he told reporters that the congresswoman does not need to apologize further.
"We should lower the temperature of this Congress," McCarthy said. "We should work together and talk to one another. In disagreements, if something goes astray, you apologize for it — exactly what Lauren Boebert did."
Asked by Tapper about if she thinks House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will ultimately move to hold a vote on stripping Boebert of her committee assignments, Omar said she had a conversation with the top Democrat and is “very confident that she will take decisive action next week.”
When asked during Sunday's interview if she believes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will hold a vote on stripping Boebert of her committee assignments, Omar said she is "very confident that she will take decisive action next week" and added that Pelosi made a "promise to me that she will take care of this."
Omar also said that it is "unbecoming of a congresswoman to use that kind of derogatory, dangerous, inciting language against a colleague."
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