President Donald Trump posted a baffling social media post demanding that a U.S. citizen and Democratic congresswoman be “thrown out” of the country.
The president has been raging against Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota for more than a month after news broke that some members of the Somali diaspora had allegedly defrauded the state of Minnesota by billing for social services that were never provided.
On Wednesday, Trump shared an article from the conservative site Just the News about U.S. citizens of Somali origin transporting cash from Atlanta, Georgia, and Columbus, Ohio, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, en route to Dubai, UAE.
“They should be thrown out of the USA. Get it done, NOW! That includes their loser Rep. Omar, who married her brother (gross!),” Trump wrote Wednesday on his platform Truth Social.
He then shared an interview with House Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, saying the state’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz “should be in cuffs.”
Neither Walz nor Omar, who fled Somalia’s civil war as a child, has been accused of any involvement in the fraud scheme.
It was not immediately clear who the president was addressing or how he envisioned “throwing out” Omar, since it’s unconstitutional to deport an American citizen. The 43-year-old spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before being granted asylum and moving to the U.S., becoming a citizen in 2000 at age 17.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Omar, Walz, and the White House for comment.
The president apparently became fixated on the idea of “throwing out” Omar after he saw a video, which he shared on Christmas Day, of former Fox News host Megyn Kelly calling Omar’s citizenship into question.
“Throw her out of the U.S., Now!” he wrote.
He also railed against her last month at a Cabinet meeting at the White House and a campaign-style rally in Pennsylvania.
“Ilhan Omar is garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that work. These are people that say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’ These are people that do nothing but complain,” he told his Cabinet.
Less than a week later, he took the stage at a rally in Pennsylvania and announced a “permanent pause” on migration from “hellholes” like Somalia, and once again raged against Omar until the crowd began chanting, “Send her back!”
The lawmaker responded by calling out Trump’s obsession with her, which she described as “creepy” and “weird.”
“Trump’s obsession with me is beyond weird. He needs serious help,” she wrote on social media. “Since he has no economic policies to tout, he’s resorting to regurgitating bigoted lies instead. He continues to be a national embarrassment.”
