President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon falsely claimed freshman Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) called the United States “garbage” and a country full of “evil Jews.”
“The First Lady thinks that it’s horrible what they’ve said about Israel and horrible what they’ve said about our country, these congresswomen,” Trump told reporters while leaving the White House about Omar and Ocasio-Cortez. The pair are two of four female minority representatives the president infamously said should “go back” to their home countries in a tweet earlier this month that many news outlets and people labeled as racist.
“They can’t call our country and our people ‘garbage.’ They can’t be anti-Semitic. They can’t talk about evil Jews, which is what they say. ‘Evil Jews,’ ” Trump added of Omar and Ocasio-Cortez, whom he claimed “hate our country.”
A fact-check from CNN reveals the pair of congresswomen never said such things. What Ocasio-Cortez really said in March at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas is that the U.S. should never “settle” for moderate social policies she believes are “10% better from garbage.”
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It feels like moderate is not a stance, it’s just an attitude toward life of like, ‘meh,’ ” Ocasio-Cortez said at the time.
This weekend, Trump also failed to explicitly disavow the chants of “send her back” that his supporters started in reference to Omar at a recent rally. The president called his fans who shouted the statement “patriots.”
In 2014, Trump used the term “garbage” in a tweet to describe the state of the U.S. under then-President Barack Obama.
As for Omar, the Somali-born Muslim congresswoman tweeted in 2012 that “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
After that tweet resurfaced this year, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers condemned it as anti-Semitic.
Omar explained her remark in an interview with CNN, saying: “I don’t know how my comments would be offensive to Jewish Americans. My comments precisely are addressing what was happening during the Gaza War, and I am clearly speaking of the way the Israeli regime was conducting itself in that war.”
The Minnesota congresswoman later added she was unaware that the word “hypnotize” specifically contained long-held anti-Semitic undertones.
Omar drew severe backlash from members of both parties earlier this year after she criticized the heavy influence of Israeli lobbying group AIPAC on American politics.
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