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Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump is refusing to tone down his rhetoric after an attack on Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.
What happened? Omar, a Somali American who represents Minneapolis in Congress, was attacked at a town hall on Tuesday by a man who sprayed an unknown liquid on her with a syringe. She was unharmed and able to continue the town hall, but it was an alarming moment after months of virulently racist rhetoric against Somalis and Somali Americans by Trump.
When asked about the attack Tuesday evening, Trump told ABC that “I think [Omar]‘s a fraud. … She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.”
What’s the context? Trump has verbally attacked Omar for years, including telling her and three other members of Congress to “go back” to their home countries in 2019 (of the four, only Omar was born outside of the US; she is a naturalized US citizen).
Recently, however, Trump has taken an even darker turn: In December, he called Somali immigrants “garbage” who have “destroyed our country”; this month, he said, “I always say these are low-IQ people. How do they go into Minnesota and steal all that money?”
The current ICE and CBP presence in Minneapolis began as an attempt to target the city’s large Somali community following right-wing outrage over a welfare fraud scandal (many of those charged in connection with the scandal are Somali American).
Why does this matter? We don’t know for sure if Trump’s rhetoric is directly connected to the attack on Omar, though there is evidence that her attacker supported Trump. But what we do know is bad enough: In addition to being shockingly hateful, Trump’s verbal attacks on Omar and Somali Americans dehumanize an entire community. And brutal immigration operations targeting Somali immigrants — first in Minneapolis and now in Maine — follow the logic of collective punishment.