"The speech was, in that familiar Trumpian way, about permission: who gets to be here, who gets to be counted, who gets to be treated as American. And, to illustrate this, Trump reached for one of his favorite targets: Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, a Somali American citizen whose presence in this country has infuriated Trump for nearly a decade (and for whom I used to work as a political communications operative):"
"I love this Ilhan Omar, whatever the hell her name is, with the little turban. I love her. She comes in, does nothing but bitch...I love it. She comes to our country and she's always complaining about the constitution...she should get the hell out, throw her the hell out. Right on cue, the audience played the chorus. An old classic. " Send her back." As I said, Trump's hatred of Omar is nothing new. But his obsessive, almost devotional hostility towards her is still notable."
President Donald Trump delivered a Pennsylvania speech framed as about affordability but combined economic claims with scapegoating and racist rhetoric. He used the appearance of Representative Ilhan Omar, a Somali American Muslim and former refugee, as an exemplar to question who counts as American, urging her removal and prompting the crowd to chant “Send her back.” The rhetoric framed immigrant and minority presence as a political and demographic threat. The attacks on Omar reflect both racialized resentment toward a Black Muslim woman and a deeper anxiety about shifting demographics and political power that the MAGA movement mobilizes.
Read at The Nation
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