“I look at Omar. I don’t know. I never met her. I hear the way she talks about al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda has killed many Americans. She said, ‘You can hold your chest out, you can — when I think of America, huh, when I think of al-Qaeda, I can hold my chest out.’ When she talked about the World Trade Center being knocked down, ‘Some people.’ You remember the famous ‘some people’?”
— President Trump, in remarks at the White House, July 15, 2019
“When I hear people speaking about how wonderful al-Qaeda is, when I hear people talking about ‘some people,’ ‘some people’ with the World Trade Center. Some people? No, not ‘some people.’ Much more than ‘some people’.”
— Trump
“A politician that hears somebody, where we’re at war with al-Qaeda, and sees somebody talking about how great al-Qaeda is. Pick out her statement. That was Omar. ‘How great al-Qaeda is.’ And we’re losing great soldiers to al-Qaeda.”
— Trump
The president accused Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) of supporting the terrorist group behind the 9/11 attacks.
Omar, a Somali American and practicing Muslim, was elected to Congress in 2018. She’s a member of “the Squad,” an informal group of liberal Democrats that also includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.).
Trump lashed out at the foursome in a Twitter statement Sunday, telling them to “go back” to their countries. Asked about those racist comments the next day, Trump alleged that Omar has voiced support for al-Qaeda. “When I think of al-Qaeda, I can hold my chest out,” Trump quoted Omar as saying.
View the complete July 17 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.