By Linda Qiu
Monday July 15, 2019
“I will not dignify it with an answer,” Representative Ilhan Omar, left, said of the president’s comments on Monday.
Credit - Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times
President Trump on Monday defended his tweets suggesting that four Democratic members of Congress “go back” to the countries they came from by assailing one, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, for what he said were remarks she had made about Al Qaeda.
“I am watching them, all they do is complain, so all I’m saying is if they want to leave they can leave,” Mr. Trump said before launching into a broad attack on Ms. Omar, who was born in Somalia but is a naturalized United States citizen.
Here’s a fact check.
What Mr. Trump Said
“I look at Omar, I don’t know, I never met her. I hear the way she talks about Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda has killed many Americans. She said you can hold your chest out, you can — when I think of America, when I think of Al Qaeda I can hold my chest out.”
“When I hear the hatred they have for Israel and the love they have for enemies like Al Qaeda, then you know what?”
“A politician that hears somebody, where we’re at war with Al Qaeda, and sees somebody talking about how great Al Qaeda is.”
False.
Mr. Trump was referring to — and grossly distorting — remarks Ms. Omar made during a 2013 interview on a local PBS television show when she was a community activist.
Nowhere in the interview does she proclaim “love” for Al Qaeda or “how great” the terrorist group is. In fact, Ms. Omar repeatedly noted that Al Qaeda and Al Shabab had committed “evil” acts and “atrocities” and were “taking part in terror” around the world.
The “you can hold your chest out” quote Mr. Trump cited inaccurately refers to an exchange about the language used to describe terrorist groups between Ms. Omar and Mr. Tharwat.
“It’s very interesting that we keep the Arabic names to such violent or negative entities: Al Qaeda, Al Shabab, Hezbollah. Have you thought about that? Can’t you translate that?” Mr. Tharwat said, commenting that their English-language equivalents are more benign-sounding phrases like “the base” or “party of God.”
“They are polluting our language, our daily, casual languages,” he continued.
“I think that is a product of the sensationalized media,” Ms. Omar responded. “You have these sound bites and these words, and everybody says it with such intensity so it must mean or hold a bigger meaning.”
She then described, while laughing, her experience taking a class about the ideology of terrorism in college and “every time the professor said Al Qaeda, he sort of like — his shoulders went up.”
“You don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity,” she said, commenting on what she believed the professor’s body language was conveying in referring to Al Qaeda. “You don’t say ‘England’ with an intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with an intensity. But you say these names because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to leave something.”
Mr. Trump is not the first to take Ms. Omar’s 2013 interview remarks out of context. Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and Mr. Trump’s lawyer, and officials for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have previously shared social media posts accusing Ms. Omar of taking “terrorism classes.”
Ms. Omar has criticized Saudi Arabia’s royal family for its financial links to Al Qaeda. In congressional hearings, she has also expressed concerns that American weapons “end up in the hands of terrorists” used to carry out attacks in the Middle East and described a “horrific reign of terror” in Africa under Shabab and Boko Haram militants.
Asked about Mr. Trump’s comments on Monday, Ms. Omar responded, “I will not dignify it with an answer,” adding that the president’s claim was “ridiculous.” She compared the his comment to asking white people whether they “love” an active shooter who is white.
Mr. Trump also cited remarks Ms. Omar had made about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: “When she talked about the World Trade Center being knocked down, ‘some people.’ You remember the famous ‘some people.’”
In a March speech made to the Council on American-Islamic Relations about discrimination against Muslims, Ms. Omar said the group “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.” (The group was founded in 1994, and Ms. Omar’s staff said she misspoke.)
Responding to the criticism, Ms. Omar pointed out that former President George W. Bush had similarly described the terrorist attacks when he said in 2001 “the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
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Linda Qiu is a fact-check reporter, based in Washington. She came to The Times in 2017 from the fact-checking service PolitiFact. @ylindaqiu