What ‘unity’? Republicans call out Ilhan Omar after she says Trump held ‘Klan rallies’ during campaign

After Rep. Ilhan Omar described President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies as those of the KKK, outraged Republicans pointed out this hardly fits with the Democrats’ calls for unity and healing under a Biden-Harris administration.

Speaking with the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart on Monday, Omar (D-Minnesota) said relatives worried for her safety whenever Trump would bring her up by name, “sometimes, multiple times in a day as he had held his Klan rallies throughout the country."

“This is what Ilhan Omar thinks of the 73 million people that voted for President Trump. Please tell me more about how Democrats want to ‘heal’ this country,” Benny Johnson of Turning Point USA said, sharing a clip of Omar’s remarks put up by Republican researchers.

“But you’re all about peace and unity right?” actor Kevin Sorbo tweeted, directly at Omar.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your 2020 Democratic Party,”quipped Trump campaign aide Jason Miller, also sharing the video.

“This woman is deranged,”said conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza. 

Journalist Jon Miller, himself an African-American, said he will “not put up” with Omar calling her political opponents Klan members. “You can make up fairy [tales] about groups of people in Somalia, but not here. We’ve had enough. No unity.”

Omar, who was born in Somalia and immigrated to the US as a child, was elected in 2018 as part of a progressive ‘squad’ of young Democrats. The controversial congresswoman has fully embraced the language of racial grievances that many Democrats have used against the Trump administration, calling those who supported him Nazis or members of the KKK – a secret society set up by the defeated Democrats after the Civil War to terrorize freed African-American slaves.

While multiple people have wondered if they can sue Omar for defamation, members of Congress appear to enjoy considerable leeway in their public pronouncements, no matter how incendiary. 

In addition to being less than conducive to lowering the temperature of public discourse, Omar’s description of Trump rallies was factually incorrect, given that Trump’s support among minorities has increased since 2016.

Preliminary results of the November 3 election showed Trump drastically improving his support across the country, but losing five key states to Democrat Joe Biden due to a torrent of mail-in ballots. As Biden was acclaimed by the press as “president-elect,” he spoke of the need to unite and heal going forward. Trump has refused to concede and launched legal challenges to the vote count. The election is yet to be officially certified.

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