“To truly honor diversity is to never silence us.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., complained Saturday that Democratic leaders haven’t done enough to defend Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., from backlash to her comments about the Sept. 11 attacks.
Tlaib, who in January joined Omar as the first two Muslim congresswomen, accused their party of using them as tokens of diversity but otherwise trying to keep them quiet.
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“To truly honor our diversity is to never silence us,” she said.
They put us in photos when they want to show our party is diverse. However, when we ask to be at the table, or speak up about issues that impact who we are, what we fight for & why we ran in the first place, we are ignored. To truly honor our diversity is to never silence us. https://t.co/7T1OlwS1YG
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) April 13, 2019
Omar has come under fire, mostly by conservatives, since a video surfaced on Twitter last week of her characterizing 9/11 as “some people did something” at a Council on American-Islamic Relations banquet in California on March 23.
She has repeatedly stirred controversy with her criticism of the United States, including by questioning U.S.-Israel relations in terms she later admitted were anti-Semitic.
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Previously, during an appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday, Tlaib claimed that the backlash to Omar’s 9/11 comments was “racist” and put her life in danger.
“They do this all the time, especially to women of color,” she said. “They take our words out of context ’cause they’re afraid, because we speak truth, we speak truth to power,” she said.
Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib defends Rep. Ilhan Omar’s 9/11 comments: “she does speak truth”
Tlaib suggests that those who are criticizing Omar are racist pic.twitter.com/of0rgKeCWg
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 11, 2019
Meanwhile, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., another left-wing freshman congresswoman, on Saturday backed a boycott by Yemeni American shop owners of the New York Post for slamming Omar Thursday in a front-page editorial.
Ocasio-Cortez had called the criticism of Omar “an incitement of violence against progressive women of color”; compared those who are upset to Nazis, and suggested that Rep. Dan Crenshaw, D-Texas, in particular, has no right to talk about 9/11 and should instead worry about right-wing extremism.
Other top Democrats rushed to Omar’s defense on Saturday after Trump retweeted a video interspersing her edited remarks with video of the carnage of the attacks. He commented: “WE WILL NEVER FORGET!”
WE WILL NEVER FORGET! pic.twitter.com/VxrGFRFeJM
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scolded Trump for using the “painful images of 9/11 for a political attack” against Omar.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said during a presidential campaign stop in New Hampshire that Trump is “trying to incite violence and to divide us, and every political leader should speak out against that.”
Omar spoke out for herself in an appearance Wednesday on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” saying: “I took an oath to uphold the Constitution. I am as American as everyone else is.”
She also said in a series of tweets Saturday that Trump, whom she indirectly called “corrupt, inept,” and “vicious” cannot “threaten my unwavering love for America.”
No one person – no matter how corrupt, inept, or vicious – can threaten my unwavering love for America. I stand undeterred to continue fighting for equal opportunity in our pursuit of happiness for all Americans.
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) April 13, 2019
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