Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and President Donald Trump reportedly traded barbs this week after Trump mocked the congresswoman for invoking the Constitution while criticizing his policies and leadership.
The exchange, familiar in tone and tension, underscored the enduring friction between the populist Republican and one of the Democratic Party’s most outspoken progressive figures.
In an interview Monday on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Trump referenced Omar while blasting Democrats for what he described as their moral hypocrisy and disdain for traditional American values. “I look at somebody that comes from Somalia, where they don’t have anything — they don’t have police, they don’t have military, they don’t have anything,” Trump said. “All they have is crime — and she comes in and tells us how to run our country.”
The president mimicked Omar’s frequent appeals to constitutional principles, saying, “‘The Constitution says this, the Constitution says…’ The whole thing is crazy,” he added.
Omar responded sharply on the social media platform X, writing, “Unlike you, I can read and that’s why I know what the Constitution says.” The jab reflected the lawmaker’s combative style, which has often drawn both praise and criticism within her party.
Omar, now in her fourth term in Congress, fled Somalia’s civil war as a child before resettling in the United States and becoming a citizen in 2000 at the age of 17.
She has often framed her political identity around that journey, portraying herself as a symbol of America’s inclusivity. But critics, including Trump, have questioned whether her rhetoric and policy positions reflect a genuine respect for the nation’s founding ideals.
The president’s remarks this week echoed earlier comments he made on his Truth Social platform suggesting that Omar “go back” to Somalia — a refrain he has used to argue that lawmakers who denounce America’s institutions or culture should be reminded of what they left behind.
In late September, during a meeting in the Oval Office, Trump even joked about the idea with Somalia’s leadership, saying, “I suggested that maybe he’d like to take her back.” The president added that the Somali leader declined, saying, “I don’t want her.”
Omar has dismissed such comments as empty threats, telling interviewers she is unbothered by speculation about her citizenship. “I have no worry,” she said last month. “I don’t know how they’d take away my citizenship and, like, deport me.”
She continued, “But I don’t even know, like, why that’s such a scary threat. I’m not the 8-year-old who escaped war anymore. I’m grown. My kids are grown. Like, I can go live wherever I want.”
The White House on Monday responded to Omar’s latest remarks with a campaign image of Trump smiling from a McDonald’s drive-thru window — a lighthearted retort suggesting the president remains undeterred by criticism from his Democratic rivals.
For Trump, the exchange offered another opportunity to draw a sharp contrast between his populist nationalism and the globalist progressivism embodied by figures like Omar — a reminder, perhaps, of how cultural and constitutional debates still define the nation’s political divide.
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