WASHINGTON – The NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus have joined the chorus of critics who say President Donald Trump’s tweets against Rep. Ilhan Omar were “racist” attacks.
Omar, D-Minn., said during a speech to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, “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.”
Trump then tweeted a video of Omar matched up with video from the 9/11 attacks with “WE WILL NEVER FORGET” and retweeted a video of Omar making light of the terms Al-QaIda and Hezbollah.
“Trump’s recent tweet invokes painful memories to promote his racist agenda,” the NAACP said. “This is maddening but not surprising for a president whose presidential campaign and presidency has been based on hate, xenophobia, and bigotry. The president needs to realize that his words have the power to incite hate, violence, and ignorance that is nothing but a detriment to our society.”
The Congressional Black Caucus also criticized Trump’s tweets.
“There was a time when presidents of either party could be looked too for leadership in pulling our country together and denouncing hate, but it’s clear that those days are over so long as Donald Trump is in the White House,” the CBC said. “His attacks on Representative Omar … not only spew hate and division, they are putting the life of a member of Congress in danger.”
Jose Casanova, a sociology professor at Georgetown University, said Trump sent out the tweets because Omar is “a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant from Africa and those are, of course, the things Trump is against. And so therefore Trump chose her as the symbol of everything that he wants to fight against.”