Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., issued a five-tweet response on Saturday after President Trump and others attacked her by promulgating a video with jarring images of the 9/11 attacks.
“I did not run for Congress to be silent,” she wrote. “I did not run for Congress to sit on the sidelines. I ran because I believed it was time to restore moral clarity and courage to Congress. To fight and to defend our democracy.”
She continued: “No one person — no matter how corrupt, inept, or vicious — can threaten my unwavering love for America. I stand undeterred to continue fighting for equal opportunity in our pursuit of happiness for all Americans.”
RELATED: Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar
Omar, who is Muslim, has come under assault in recent days for comments she made last month at a fundraiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Omar said the organization “was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.” [CAIR was in fact founded in 1994. Omar’s spokesman said she misspoke and “meant to refer to the fact that the organization had doubled in size after the Sept. 11 attacks.”]
Her opponents focused on her use of the phrase “some people did something,” implying that it minimized the attacks that brought down the Twin Towers in New York and gravely damaged the Pentagon. Almost 3,000 Americans died in those attacks and the crash of a hijacked airliner in Pennsylvania.
The blowback was fierce. On Thursday, The New York Post responded by splashing an image on its cover of the burning Twin Towers. On Friday, President Trump waded into the controversy and shared video footage of the Sept. 11 attacks.
“WE WILL NEVER FORGET!” he exclaimed on Twitter.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was among the Democrats who said Trump’s video crossed a line.
“The memory of 9/11 is sacred ground, and any discussion of it must be done with reverence,” she said in a Saturday morning press release. “The President shouldn’t use the painful images of 9/11 for a political attack.”
View Omar’s full response below:
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