Ilhan Omar likens Trump supporters to KKK as she calls his campaign speeches ‘KLAN rallies’ in shocking attack
DEMOCRATIC Rep. Ilhan Omar compared President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies to those of the Ku Klux Klan after his attacks implying she is not American.
In an interview on Monday morning with , Omar said her family has been checking in about her safety since ’s xenophobic comments about her on his campaign trail.
“He chose to speak about me at every single rally, it didn’t really matter where he was—sometimes multiple times in a day, as he had held his Klan rallies throughout the country,' Omar said, referring to the KKK.
Founded in the late 1860s, the KKK is a white supremacist hate group that targets blacks as well as immigrants, leftists and Jews, and opposed the civil rights movement.
Omar's comments on Monday drew criticism from some Trump supporters including the Republican National Committee’s rapid response director Steve Guest.
Guest tweeted a clip from the interview and remarked, "UNHINGED: Squad member Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar calls President Trump's campaign rallies 'Klan rallies.'"
The congresswoman also told The Post’s Jonathan Capehart that she has gotten accustomed to standing up to bullies in her life but what bothers her is that Trump’s attacks have also impacted her children.
“On a personal level, it hasn't really impacted me besides having my children be exposed to it,” Omar said.
“And for the last two months of this election cycle, waking up every single morning to text messages from my siblings asking if I was safe.”
Trump made xenophobic remarks about Omar— who came to the US from Somalia as a refugee in 1995 and became a US citizen in 2000—at his rally in Minnesota on September 30.
“Then she tells us how to run our country, can you believe it? How the hell did Minnesota elect her? What the hell is wrong with you people, right? What the hell happened?” he said.
Trump supporters then chanted, “Lock her up!”
And the prior week in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, Trump said, “She’s telling us how to run our country. How did you do where you came from? How is your country doing?”
Omar said that over the past two years, she has thought a lot about what the attacks have meant for people who identify with her.
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“Whether it is Muslims, whether it is black women, immigrants, refugees, that women who are aspiring to be leaders in our countries … and it’s really something to analyze and understand and to reckon with,” she said.
Omar is one of four in the progressive “Squad” of women of color that includes congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
All four members of The Squad were reelected in November, and Omar won her district by a margin of nearly 40 percent.