Rep. Ilhan Omar says Trump has ‘creepy obession’ with her and Somali community

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar called out President Donald Trump on Sunday, days after his vicious personal attacks on her and the Somali immigrant community in her home state of Minnesota.

“It’s disgusting. It’s completely disgusting,” Omar told CBS on “Face the Nation.”

The 43-year-old congresswoman and former Somali child refugee said of the president, “These are Americans that he is calling garbage, and we feel like there is an unhealthy obsession that he has on the Somali community, and an unhealthy and creepy obsession that he has with me.”

Omar also warned that Trump’s use of the bully pulpit is harmful to Somalis in the United States.

“I think it is also really important for us to remember that this kind of hateful rhetoric and this level of dehumanizing can lead to dangerous actions by people who listen to the President,” she cautioned.

On Friday, a Somali couple were the victims of a racist and Islamophobic verbal attack at a Cinnabon inside a mall in Wisconsin, which borders Minnesota. The store employee, who called them the n-word and proudly said, “I am racist,” was immediately terminated, Cinnabon announced on Saturday.

The Somali community has been a target of President Trump and White House officials, who pointed to a New York Times report about a few dozen Somali immigrants allegedly committing $1 billion in fraud of federal COVID-19 funds.

“Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thanksgiving.

During a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Dec. 2, Trump took his criticism further by using harsh language to describe the more than 80,000 Somalis living in Minnesota and more than 250,000 in the United States.

“Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country. I could say that about other countries, too,” said the president. He added, “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”

Rep. Omar also called out Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who is credited with crafting Trump’s immigration policies. The congresswoman said Miller’s “White supremacist rhetoric” reminds her of how Nazis talked about Jewish people in Germany.

“We know the way in which people were described back then…we’re, yes, of course, ethnically Somali, we are in this country as Americans, we are citizens, we are a productive part of this nation, and we will continue to be,” she said.