Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has published an op-ed in the New York Times on Thursday in which she urges readers to go beyond condemning President Donald Trump as a racist, and “confront” his policies. Along the way, she confirms Trump’s basic criticism of her: namely, that she does not like the United States of America, at least as she finds it.
In the op-ed, “It Is Not Enough to Condemn Trump’s Racism,” Omar repeats a set of familiar — and discredited — attacks on Trump. The most egregious of these is her claim that Trump “tacitly accepted” the white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, who chanted “Jews will not replace us” at a rally in August 2017.
In fact, Trump explicitly condemned them, several times, doing so “in the strongest possible terms” (Aug. 12, 2017), calling them “repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans” (Aug. 14), and saying they should be “condemned totally” (Aug. 15).