President Trump tweeted an edited video of recent comments from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) about the 9/11 attacks that provoked an avalanche of conservative criticism.
The video shows Omar speaking to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) in March interspersed with video of the 9/11 attacks. Omar’s comments that “some people did something,” referring to 9/11, are spliced in between segments of footage, with the words “September 11, 2001 We remember” appearing at the end.
{mosads}Omar’s comment has gone viral among conservative social media circles, with Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) slamming the comment as “unbelievable” and Fox News host Brian Kilmeade questioning on air “You have to wonder if she’s an American first.”
But many of the criticisms cut out the end of Omar’s quote in which she said that many Muslims across the country were being improperly connected with the attacks.
“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,” she said.
CAIR was founded in 1994, but Omar’s office has said she misspoke and meant to note that the organization doubled in size after the 2001 attacks.
Several of Omar’s House allies defended her once the criticism began, with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), another Muslim freshman congresswoman in the House, slamming a New York Post cover with the edited quote as spreading hate and “endangering the life of Rep. Omar.”