Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) arrived at a Minnesota airport on Thursday to a crowd of supporters greeted her while chanting, “Welcome home Ilhan.”
Omar posted a video of the greeting on Twitter, writing: “It’s good to be home. ❤️”
The greeting came a day after supporters at President Trump’s Wednesday night campaign rally in North Carolina chanted “send her back” about Omar after the president launched attacks on the freshman congresswoman, who came to the U.S. as a Somali refugee as a child.
{mosads}Trump accused Omar of demeaning U.S. service members and minimizing the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying “she looks down with contempt on the hard-working Americans saying that ignorance is pervasive in many parts of this country.”
Trump has targeted Omar and three other progressive, minority lawmakers — Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) — in recent days, tweeting Sunday that the members should “go back” to their home countries, despite that all four are U.S. citizens.
Omar spoke out earlier Thursday against Trump’s comments, calling him a “fascist” and stopping traffic in downtown Washington, D.C., to hold an impromptu press conference responding to the president’s supporters and their chants.
“I want to remind people that this is what this president and his supporters have turned our country [into] that is supposed to be a country where we allow democratic debate and dissent to take place,” Omar said. “This is not about me; this is about us fighting for what this country truly should be and what it deserves to be.”