Ilhan Omar has faced some heat over the massive $1 billion fraud scandal in her home district, especially after it came to light that she had close ties to several of the people involved.
For example, one of her staff members was convicted in the scandal, and she held several parties at one of the key restaurants implicated in it. Omar also co-sponsored the MEALS Act (More Efficient and Accountable Local School) of 2020, which relaxed U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) requirements for child nutrition programs during the COVID-19 pandemic and allowed fraudsters in Minnesota to steal $250 million in taxpayer money.
She has also been photographed with several others convicted in the scheme.
“[Rep. Omar] knew who these people were. People she personally knew were making tens of millions of dollars in this program,” Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment, told the New York Post. “She had been inside the [Safari] facility on numerous occasions and couldn’t put 2 and 2 together? Either she’s terminally naive, or knew and didn’t care.”
According to law enforcement, Omar has not been directly linked to the scandal, but she is desperate to deflect the heat. So, she took to writing an opinion piece for the New York Times, deflecting blame in the only way Democrats know how—by blaming President Trump.
"On Tuesday, President Trump called my friends and me 'garbage.' " she began. "This comment was only the latest in a series of remarks and Truth Social posts in which the president has demonized and spread conspiracy theories about the Somali community and about me personally. For years, the president has spewed hate speech in an effort to gin up contempt against me. He reaches for the same playbook of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and division again and again."
Mr. Trump denigrates not only Somalis but so many other immigrants, too, particularly those who are Black and Muslim. While he has consistently tried to vilify newcomers, we will not let him silence us. He fails to realize how deeply Somali Americans love this country. We are doctors, teachers, police officers and elected leaders working to make our country better. Over 90 percent of Somalis living in my home state, Minnesota, are American citizens by birth or naturalization. Some even supported Mr. Trump at the ballot box.
Omar went on to say that she stays up at night, worrying about the safety of the "people who share the identities I hold — Black, Somali, hijabi, immigrant — will suffer the consequences of [President Trump's] words." She then blasted Trump for a worsening economic crisis:
While the president wastes his time attacking my community, my state, my governor and me, the promises of economic prosperity he made in his run for president last year have not come to fruition. Prices have not come down; in many cases, they have risen. His implementation of tariffs has hurt farmers and small business owners. His policies have only worsened the affordability crisis for Americans. And now, with Affordable Care Act tax credits set to expire, health care costs for American households are primed to skyrocket, and millions of people risk losing their coverage under his signature domestic policy bill.
The president knows he is failing, and so he is reverting to what he knows best: trying to divert attention by stoking bigotry.
Democrats have one strategy when they are put under the microscope, and that is directing voter ire to one man and one man only for the last decade: Donald J. Trump.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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