House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slammed President Donald Trump on Saturday for his post depicting Rep. Ilhan Omar as being dismissive of the 9/11 attacks. Pelosi called the president out for using “painful” images of the attack for his own political gains, according to The Hill .
“The memory of 9/11 is sacred ground, and any discussion of it must be done with reverence. The President shouldn’t use the painful images of 9/11 for a political attack,” Pelosi said. “It is wrong for the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to fan the flames to make anyone less safe.”
The president tweeted a video on Friday that had been edited to suggest that Omar, who is a Muslim, was being flippant about the devastating attacks. The video shows Omar while speaking with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), taking a line out of context to say that “some people did something,” in reference to the attacks.
The full quote actually references the plight of Muslim-Americans, whom she says have been relegated to living as second-class citizens after extremists attacked the country. She said that many people had lost civil liberties in the U.S. and that was the impetus for founding CAIR “after 9/11.” However, Omar’s spokesperson said that she misspoke and wanted to say that the council was founded in 1994 and saw a dramatic increase in membership after the 9/11 attacks seven years later.
But the president’s tweet shows a snippet Omar’s speech followed by news coverage of the planes hitting the buildings on September 11, leaving out the full context of the speech. The statement, which plays on a loop, has a very different meaning when placed in the context of the rest of the video.
WE WILL NEVER FORGET! pic.twitter.com/VxrGFRFeJM
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019
Trump immediately faced a backlash from lawmakers and citizens alike. Senator Elizabeth Warren came to Omar’s defense, saying that Trump is encouraging violence against Muslims in the country.
“The President is inciting violence against a sitting Congresswoman—and an entire group of Americans based on their religion. It’s disgusting. It’s shameful. And any elected leader who refuses to condemn it shares responsibility for it,” she tweeted .
Senator Bernie Sanders also came to the Representative’s defense, as The Inquisitr previously reported. He said that Omar is a courageous leader and called Trump’s tweet one of “racism and hate.” He also called the attack against her “disgusting and dangerous.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out in a tweet for members of Congress to speak out about Trump’s attack on Omar.
Members of Congress have a duty to respond to the President’s explicit attack today. @IlhanMN ’s life is in danger. For our colleagues to be silent is to be complicit in the outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress.
We must speak out.
“First they came…” pic.twitter.com/ygOX1vhE9j
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 12, 2019
After Trump’s tweet, the hashtag #ISTandWithIlhan began trending on Twitter, indicating that the lawmaker has broad support despite the president’s rhetoric.
