Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has officially gone scorched earth. She’s bashed former President Barack Obama, essentially calling him a murderer for his drone strike program and said that his policies were not good, just more polished. Tim Alberta quoted Omar in his piece for Politico last week. Given her penchant for peddling anti-Semitic remarks that put her party’s leadership in a bind (again), plus this shot across the bow against a beloved Democrat, Omar once again showed that she’s not afraid to shoot inside the ship (via The Hill):
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a progressive firebrand currently the focus of controversy over comments she made about Israel, appeared to rebuke former President Obama in a new interview, comparing him to President Trump, only "more polished."
Omar slammed Obama’s “hope and change” message as more smoke and mirrors than anything concrete, saying, like Trump, his immigration policies involved detaining children at the southern border and he made heavy use of lethal drone strikes overseas.
We can’t be only upset with Trump. … His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,” Omar told Politico. “And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”
The best part about this is that she tried to backpedal and blame the media for distorting her words. She tweeted, “Exhibit A of how reporters distort words. I’m an Obama fan! I was saying how Trump is different from Obama, and why we should focus on policy, not politics.” If you search her account, you’ll see that it was deleted and for good reason: the audio only showed that Alberta quoted her accurately. So, maybe she knows what words mean. Maybe she knows exactly what she says. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has used the ‘Omar is too dumb’ to know what she’s saying to shield her from accusations of anti-Semitism. Maybe Omar is just a bull in a china closet that Pelosi and company cannot control. Grab some popcorn if that’s the case.
Good for @TimAlberta, who is absolutely correct here (and notice @Ilhan deleted her tweet) https://t.co/gDiPUodmyY
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) March 9, 2019
Politicians straight up lying about being misquoted by a reporter is common enough, but this is the first time one went out of their way to prove they were BSing
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) March 9, 2019
This... this audio just confirms the framing and quotes were correct. Why would you post this? https://t.co/GRJP18tpdv
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) March 9, 2019
Since @IlhanMN deleted the link to the very audio that proved she was quoted accurately... https://t.co/fp9zVI5k9m
— Conserving "Conserving Conservatism" Conservatism (@jtLOL) March 9, 2019
.@TimAlberta is tough but extremely fair. You were quoted accurately. Own it. https://t.co/nvtoZtM6zg
— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) March 9, 2019
And yes, there were some jokes over this dig as well:
Geez, now she's attacking Muslims. https://t.co/7E84vHe3V7
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) March 8, 2019