WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on Minnesota’s Somali community and his calls for the deportation of Rep. Ilhan Omar show a shift from a policy of racist “dog whistles” to one of openly xenophobic tirades.
When Trump denigrated Minnesota’s Somalis during his first term, he did so behind closed doors to a group of U.S. senators who later leaked Trump’s comments about “shithole countries.” At the time, Trump denied he made those comments.
Yet during a rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Trump asked the crowd “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden?”
“But we always take people from Somalia,” he continued. “Places that are a disaster. Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”
Tim Lindberg, a University of Minnesota Morris political science professor, said Trump’s behavior has changed because of several things, including the lack of any advisors who might try to rein him in.
“Everyone around him is a ‘yes man,’” Lindberg said. “Everybody tells him what he wants to hear.”
Trump is also unshackled because he cannot run for office again, Lindberg said.
Related: Rep. Ilhan Omar escapes House censure over comments about Charlie Kirk
The biggest change between Trump in his first and second terms is “the switch from more distinct populist rhetoric to a more oligarchic rhetoric and policy,” Lindberg said.
So, while Trump focused on creating and growing the MAGA movement in his first term, he is now more concerned about courting big business by cutting taxes and regulations and making connections that could help him in the future.
Still, he must also pay some attention to the movement he created, and harsh immigration policies, and rhetoric, seem to do the trick, Lindberg said.
So, to a cheering crowd in Pennsylvania, Trump — who was there to promote his administration’s efforts at “affordability” — showed little compunction in attacking Somalia and Omar, D-5th District, who was born in Somalia, again.
“I love this Ilhan Omar, whatever the hell her name is,” Trump said. “With her little turban. I love her. She comes in, does nothing but bitch. She’s always complaining. She comes from her country, where, I mean, it’s considered about the worst country in the world.”
“We gotta get her the hell out,” Trump continued, before repeating a baseless, decade-old claim about her personal life. “She married her brother in order to get in, right … she married her brother to get in, therefore she’s here illegally.”
The crowd chanted “Send her back!”
Trump’s latest attacks on Omar began with the president’s post on social media on Thanksgiving Day that also claimed Somalis are “completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota.”
Those attacks continued. Last week, Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security to ramp up immigration enforcement in Minnesota, even as the state’s Somalis are largely U.S. citizens and legal residents.
Omar said Trump’s “obsession” with her and the Somali community “is an attempt to distract from his failures.”
“At his rally meant to be on his economic achievements, he spent his time attacking me and the Somali community,” Omar said. “It is disgusting and beneath the dignity of the presidency. He continues to be an embarrassment.”
Threats on Omar spike
There is no evidence that Omar married her brother.
She fled Somalia with her family in 1982 and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before seeking asylum in the United States in 1995, when she was 12. Refugees are given lawful permanent resident status and can apply for citizenship after five years.
Omar became a citizen in 2000, when she was 17 years old.
As far as her marriages, Omar provided the Associated Press with details of her marriages and divorces in 2018, when accusations that she had wed a brother were first circulated in conservative media.
Those records show that Omar married Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi in 2002 in a Muslim faith ceremony and the couple had two children. She divorced Hirsi and married British citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, but that marriage also ended in divorce. Omar’s office confirmed that information.
The lawmaker who has represented the 5th congressional district since 2019 is currently married to Tim Mynette, a political consultant.
“Accusations that the congresswoman married her brother are absurd and offensive,” a spokeswoman for Omar said. “This is right-wing fodder with no basis in reality. It is disgusting that the right-wing continues to spread falsehoods for clicks.”
Omar has long been a target of Trump and his followers; a Florida man pleaded guilty last week to making violent threats against the congresswoman and her family in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Nevertheless, the attacks on Omar on conservative social media have spiked. The lawmaker’s office said that threats, including death threats, are also on the rise.
Related: Trump administration readying new ‘Muslim ban’ that would affect Minnesota’s Somalis and foreign students
The law that reopened the federal government last month increased the budget each member of Congress can spend on security from $10,000 to $20,000 a year. Even so, Omar is spending a lot more money on security.
The latest report filed with the Federal Election Commission shows that Omar’s campaign spent more than $18,000 for the services of a security firm in the third quarter of this year.
While fellow progressives in Congress and Minnesota’s Democratic lawmakers have come to Omar’s defense, Rep. Tom Emmer, R-6th District, has distinguished himself for attacking his colleague – and Minnesota’s Somali community.
Last week, during an interview on Fox Business, Emmer said that 80% of the crimes in the Twin Cities are being committed by Somalis, something that is patently false.
Emmer, the House Majority Whip, also vigorously called for federal investigations into several scams involving government funds for programs for children, the homeless and other vulnerable populations that involved Somalis. He also lauded Trump’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali immigrants and place Somalia on a list of 19 nations now subject to a U.S. visa ban.
Emmer has also often attacked Omar, repeatedly calling for an ethics investigation into the Democratic lawmaker and for her resignation from Congress.
Lindberg said the attacks Trump has leveled on Minnesota’s Somalis, with Emmer’s support, won’t roil the state’s Republicans, because they have had “an ongoing concern about the growing Somali population.”
While Minnesota Republicans may not like Trump’s rhetoric, they largely support the president on this issue, Lindberg said, and Emmer won’t face a backlash either.
“Emmer is taking a position that I believe his voters want,” the professor said.
The post Trump’s attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar and Minnesota Somalis represent a dark escalation appeared first on MinnPost.
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