GOP Silent After Trump Tweets Footage Of 9/11 Attacks To Target Ilhan Omar

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 10: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media prior to his departure from the White House April 10, 2019 in Washington, DC. President Trump will sign an executive order on ene... WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 10: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media prior to his departure from the White House April 10, 2019 in Washington, DC. President Trump will sign an executive order on energy and infrastructure during his visit at International Union of Operating Engineers International Training and Education Center in Crosby, Texas. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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No Republican members of Congress have objected to President Donald Trump tweeting footage of the September 11, 2001 attacks Friday night in order to target Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

Interspersed with footage of the attacks, Trump’s Twitter post showed an edited version of Omar’s remarks at a banquet for the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles last month.

During the speech, Omar lamented bigotry against American Muslims: “For far too long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen and, frankly, I’m tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it. CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.” (In fact, CAIR was founded in 1994.)

Omar’s opponents have seized upon her characterization of the attacks as “something,” omitting her broader context about civil rights. The congresswoman has been the target of a number of death threats since taking office: According to CAIR-LA, the banquet venue where the congresswoman made the remarks quoted by Trump Friday was itself targeted with a bomb threat beforehand. And recently, a New York man was arrested after allegedly threatening Omar’s life in a phone call to her congressional office.

Trump has a long history of politicizing the attacks to target Muslims. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he falsely said that he saw “thousands” of people celebrating the collapse of the Twin Towers on rooftops in New Jersey, “where you have large Arab populations.” That never happened.

Trump has also used the attacks to help himself.

In a television interview on September 11, he bragged of a building he owned near the World Trade Center: “Forty Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was, actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest. And then when they built the World Trade Center it became known as the second-tallest, and now it’s the tallest.”

He also claimed during the 2016 campaign that he “helped a little bit” by clearing out rubble after the attack, though there is no evidence of that.

Trump also isn’t the first to broadcast images of 9/11 in order to attack Omar. The New York Post did the same a day earlier, publishing an image of the Twin Towers mid-plane-impact on the paper’s front page next to Omar’s statement, which there too was quoted out-of-context.

In the same address, Omar noted Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric and said the President “knows that there are people that he can influence to threaten our lives, to diminish our presence. But what we know, and what Islam teaches us, and what I always say, is that love trumps hate.”

Some Democrats objected to Trump’s targeting of Omar.

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