Ilhan Omar wants Trump's Twitter account shut down after he retweets 'lie' that she 'partied' on 9/11 anniversary
Minnesota Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, whose short stint as a first-time Congresswoman so far has seen enough of controversies, has taken a strong dig at President Donald Trump over his act of retweeting a claim which is believed to be untrue. The 37-year-old member of the ‘Squad’ was so upset that she wanted social media site Twitter to shut down the president’s account for the act. Trump didn’t care to delete his retweet of a conspiracy theorist’s claim that Omar had ‘partied’ on the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks last week.
The Somalian-born Omar, who took over in January this year and is among the strongest critics of Trump, has been in the news this 9/11. Her remark made at a Council on American-Islamic Relations event in March that “Some people did something” on September 11, 2001, earned a lot of backlash both from her opponent political camp as well as commoners. One Nicholas Haros Junior, who runs the online networking group Facebook Apostles, slammed Omar for her comment at the 9/11 remembrance speech at Ground Zero. Haros lost his elderly mother in the 9/11 attacks as she was on duty in the South Tower when the planes attacked the World Trade Center.
Trump later used Omar’s words on 9/11 to fuel sentiments against her and the Congresswoman said it was 'putting her life in danger'. And the script saw itself rerun on Wednesday, September 18, when Trump retweeted a post from right-wing commentator Terrence Williams who accused Omar of attending a dance party on the 9/11 anniversary night and sought her ouster. He even defended Trump’s playing golf on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day, asking if the president was bashed for the same, why not Omar? Williams also included footage of the Democrat dancing at a party. Later, he deleted his tweet but Trump didn’t delete his retweet.
This act left Omar aghast who then demanded from Twitter a strong step of shutting down Trump’s account. She told Politico: “They have a responsibility and they set community standards and clearly the president has shown many-a-times that he has violated their community standards.” She said in a tweet that the “Lying President” needed to be held accountable and asked why Trump is not “deplatformed”.
Meanwhile, Williams posted another tweet hours after deleting the controversial one, saying he was under attack. He said the “looney leftists” wanted to take him down and that the “liberals are egging twitter to suspend me & Majority of them are White Racist Liberals Hating on a Black Free Thinker”.
The White House refused to issue any remark on why Trump hasn’t removed his retweet in which he mocked Omar saying she will win the Republican Party the state of Minnesota. He also called her the “new face of the Democrat Party”.
The video footage that Williams tweeted showed Omar dancing to a song by R&B artiste Lizzo and it was shot on September 13 at a party which was a part of the events related to the Congressional Black Caucus. Omar also clarified it later in a tweet saying: “'This is from a CBC event we hosted this weekend to celebrate black women in Congress. The President of the United States is continuing to spread lies that put my life at risk. What is Twitter doing to combat this misinformation?'
Omar found an ally in the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) that came up with a tweet saying its co-founder Adam Green had tweeted video of the dance that happened on September 13 and slammed Trump’s retweeting it as an act performed on 9/11 anniversary as an “abhorrent lie”.
The PCCC also sought removal of Trump’s Twitter account.