Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has flatly refused to denounce a left-wing terrorist attack.
The controversial Democrat was stone-faced when a reporter asked her to condemn a deadly firebomb assault on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility Saturday that left the assailant dead. The attacker was a 69 year-old member of the Antifa terrorist organization.
Omar won’t condemn
Omar was approached with the question by reporter Keeane Bexte from The Rebel after a press conference Monday where she and three other progressives who call themselves “the squad” attacked Donald Trump. Omar and the three other women, Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) were responding to President Trump’s now notorious tweets Sunday to “go back” to their countries of origin. In fact, only Omar, a refugee from Somalia, is an immigrant.
Bexte asked Omar if she would condemn the Antifa attack as she was leaving the presser with Ocasio-Cortez. Omar ignored Bexte’s question, which he repeated.
“Will you condemn the Antifa attack in Washington over the weekend? It’s easy to condemn terrorism, will you condemn it?” he asked. “I mean, fire bombing a concentration camp is kind of a laudable thing, if it actually is a concentration camp,” he added sarcastically, apparently referring to Ocasio-Cortez labelling immigrant detention centers “camps.”
69 year-old Willem Van Spronsen, an anarchist and “anti-fascist,” was shot dead Saturday after lobbing Molotov cocktails at an ICE facility and nearby cars in Tacoma, Washington. The man wrote a manifesto the day before in which he declared “I am Antifa” and was lauded by communist comrades as a “martyr.”
Pressley also ignored Bexte’s question when asked. Ocasio-Cortez initially did not give a response, but then told the Daily Caller that “any act of violence is of course terrible.” Ocasio-Cortez also would not tell reporters whether she felt her rhetoric had radicalized the attacker, who used the term “concentration camps” to describe immigrant facilities, The Rebel reported.
Bexte confronted the lawmakers several times, the Blaze noted. At the end of one exchange, Omar can be seen laughing at the question as Omar and Ocasio-Cortez get into a car.
“Squad,” media stay silent
Omar and other members of the “squad” were in a feud with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) last week after Ocasio-Cortez accused Pelosi of racism for dismissing their influence. But the row was briefly suspended Sunday when president Trump attacked the four Democrats.
While Trump has been condemned for an allegedly racist attack, others have come to Trump’s defense for calling out the “squad’s” anti-American rhetoric and policies. Their responses to the Antifa attack went further to illusrate what Trump called their “hate” for America.
At their press conference Monday, the four lawmakers arguably squandered whatever political capital Trump’s attack had given them by calling for Trump’s impeachment and accusing him of Russian collusion. A leaked internal Democrat poll found that Ocasio-Cortez and Omar’s poll numbers are in the tank.
Omar also declined to denounce al-Qaeda, saying that she would not deign to respond to Trump’s accusation on Monday that she is “pro al-Qaeda.”Omar has attracted scrutiny for a 2013 local TV interview in which she equivocated between the West and terror groups and mocked the way people say “al-Qaeda” and the names of other terror groups. Trump also referred to Omar’s infamous remark that 9/11 was the day “some people did something.”
“I do not expect every time there is a white supremacist who attacks or there is a white man who kills in a school or in a movie theater or in a mosque or in a synagogue, I don’t expect my white community members to respond on whether they love that person or not. And so I think it’s beyond time, it’s beyond time to ask Muslims to condemn terrorists,” Omar said.
Ocasio-Cortez and Omar were among the Democrats who shared advice with illegal immigrants on how to avoid ICE as raids were expected Sunday. As the enforcement sweeps loomed, anti-ICE protesters took down an American flag outside an ICE facility in Aurora, Colorado on Friday and hoisted a Mexican flag in its place.
Meanwhile, the Antifa terrorist attack received little mainstream media coverage. While Democrats won’t say how they feel about the attack, they certainly don’t seem displeased.
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