During a campaign speech in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Saturday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump seemingly confused two Midwestern Democratic congresswomen of color, Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
Both congresswomen, the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, are founding members of “The Squad,” an informal group of progressive House members formed in 2019.
Trump has often made inflammatory remarks about the group, such as a 2019 comment telling the four founding women to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” His comments sparked a North Carolina rally crowd to chant “Send her back!”
Meanwhile, the left-wing members, which have since expanded to nine, are outspoken against Trump and his rhetoric. In 2020, Omar said of Trump, “Not only is he a racist, but he’s a racist xenophobic. Because he’s not against immigration, he’s just against immigrants who look like me.”
Omar immigrated to the U.S. as a Somali refugee when she was a child and is a naturalized U.S. citizen. She is the first Somali American and refugee elected to Congress, and the first woman of color to represent Minnesota.
On Saturday night, in his attempt to launch an attack on Omar, Trump mistakenly conflated her with Tlaib when referencing an August 2016 Trump campaign event in Detroit where Tlaib was escorted out for heckling him.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s spokesperson and Omar and Tlaib’s press secretaries for comment via email on Sunday.
In the days following the incident, Tlaib wrote in an opinion piece in The Detroit Free Press, “I believe it is unbecoming of any American to not stand up to Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric and tactics.”
She recounted the incident as, “I told Trump that ‘our children deserve better’ and I asked him to provide a better example to our kids. I implored him to read the U.S. Constitution. And then I was grabbed by several security personnel who physically moved me to the exit while I continued to express my concerns.”
Videos of Tlaib being escorted out by security resurfaced in 2019, showing her shouting “You guys are crazy!”
In his Saturday night speech, Trump confused the events involving Tlaib with Omar, saying, “Ilhan Omar, she went to a speech when I was running, when I was first running…this lunatic was in the audience, she started screaming. I said, ‘Who the hell is that?’ and it’s the same crazy person that I watch every night, she’s nuts.”
He reiterated to the crowd, “I was making a speech, we had a lot of people…and she got up and started screaming, I said ‘That woman is insane, she’s crazy.'”
The segment of Trump’s speech has been circulating on X, formerly Twitter, with users like Acyn, senior editor at the left-leaning outlet MeidasTouch, highlighting that Trump confused the two congresswomen.
“Not sure if he meant someone else here,” Acyn wrote.
Not sure if he meant someone else here https://t.co/Fjxvqyy4dQ pic.twitter.com/Tr2CwZoMf4
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 28, 2024
Trump, meanwhile, has previously misconstrued Omar as a terrorist sympathizer, claimed she “hate[s] our country,” and called her an “anti-Semite.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
