NEW YORK, Apr 15 (APP):The speaker of the US House of Representatives has asked officials to review security measures intended to protect newly-elected Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar after President Donald Trump tweeted a video attacking Ms. Omar using images of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“Following the president’s tweet, I spoke with the sergeant-at-arms to ensure that Capitol Police are conducting a security assessment to safeguard Congresswoman Omar, her family and her staff,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement issued in Washington on Sunday night. “They will continue to monitor and address the threats she faces.”
After Ms. Pelosi released her statement, a spokesman for Ms. Omar, Jeremy Slevin, said, “Our office has seen an increase in direct threats on (Congresswoman) Omar’s life — many directly referencing the president’s video.” He said Ms. Omar’s office has collected a series of menacing tweets over the last few days, some accusing her of treason.
The footage promoted by Trump intercut images of the World Trade Center aflame with comments from Ms. Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, about the treatment of Muslims after Sept. 11, The New York Times noted. Conservatives have seized on those remarks as dismissive of the attacks.
“The president’s words weigh a ton, and his hateful and inflammatory rhetoric creates real danger,” Ms. Pelosi said. “President Trump must take down his disrespectful and dangerous video.”
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Trump was not inciting violence against Ms. Omar, or Muslims in general, and would not be ashamed for “speaking out against” violence. She added that Democrats should be “taking the same hard line that the president is” against Ms. Omar.
Ms. Sanders said on “Fox News Sunday” that referring to the Sept. 11 attacks “in such a dismissive way is frankly disgusting and abhorrent.”
Ms. Omar, appearing at an event in Los Angeles last month sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy organization, suggested that government officials infringed upon the free-speech rights of some Muslim Americans after the Sept. 11 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, making an incorrect reference to the organization’s founding, which actually took place in 1994.
Ms. Omar’s critics have seized on the “some people did something” remark, the Times pointed out. But others have said the words were taken out of context. The speech focused on attacks Muslims in America faced after Sept. 11. A spokesman for Ms. Omar has said the entire speech was addressing civil rights and the “danger of Islamophobia in the United States and around the world — in particular the danger of associating all members of a religion with the acts of a few despicable terrorists.”
Ms. Pelosi, who is traveling in Europe during the congressional recess, has tried to contact Ms. Omar, but her travel schedule has made it hard for the two to connect, the Times said, citing a Democratic. The speaker criticized Mr. Trump in a series of early-morning tweets on Sunday from Germany, where she was visiting with United States service members.
“It is wrong for the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to fan the flames to make anyone less safe,” she wrote.
But the remarks have caught fire in conservative circles. The New York Post, owned by Trump ally Rupert Murdoch, juxtaposed Ms. Omar’s comments with a picture of the twin towers on its cover last week.
On Friday, Mr. Trump followed suit. “WE WILL NEVER FORGET,” the president tweeted to his nearly 60 million followers, while posting the video that repeatedly played Ms. Omar’s reference to “some people,” then cut to the planes slamming into the Manhattan skyline.
Ms. Omar has been the subject of numerous threats. Earlier this month, federal prosecutors charged a New York State man with phoning in a death threat to her.
The attacks on the congresswoman have provided Democrats with a rare opportunity to unify around Ms. Omar, whose previous comments about Israel have been interpreted as anti-Semitic by some Jewish Democrats in Congress. After a fierce internal debate, Democrats passed a catchall anti-bigotry resolution last month that was intended, in part, to put the controversy over Ms. Omar’s remarks to rest.
Ms. Pelosi joins a growing list of Democrats, including many of the declared 2020 candidates, who have denounced Mr. Trump’s tweet.
On Saturday, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, accused the president of “inciting violence against a sitting Congresswoman — and an entire group of Americans based on their religion” in a tweet.
Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, said Trump’s actions were another reminder of how important it was to unseat him in 2020.
“For two years, this President has used the most powerful platform in the world to sow hate & division,” she tweeted. “I’ll be blunt — we must defeat him.”
