(DCNF)—President Donald Trump accused Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota of marrying her brother during an interview with Politico’s Dasha Burns released Tuesday.
Questions about whether Omar committed immigration fraud have dogged the Somali-born Minnesota congresswoman since she was elected to Congress in 2018, with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune uncovering inconsistencies regarding her marital history in a 2019 report. Trump took aim at Omar, who has attacked operations by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into the Minneapolis area to target illegal immigrants from Somalia after revelations into at least $1 billion in welfare fraud, some of which allegedly went to the radical Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabaab, during his appearance on “The Conversation.”
“I want to see people that contribute. I don’t want to see Somalia,” Trump told Burns. “I don’t want to see a woman that, you know, marries her brother to get in and then becomes a congressman, does nothing but complain.”
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Omar claimed during a Sunday appearance on “Face the Nation” that Somalis in Minnesota were also victims of the welfare fraud scheme.
“All she does is complain, complain, complain and yet her country is a mess. You know, it’s one of the worst in the world,” Trump said. “Let her go back, fix up her own country. So no, Somalia, and I was right about it.”
“You know, I started complaining about Somalia long before the scandal… the horrible things they’re doing to Minnesota,” Trump continued before taking aim at Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. “It’s incredible. They have an incompetent governor there, too.”
Omar married Ahmed Elmi in a 2009 civil ceremony in Minnesota, seven years after she married Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi in an Islamic ceremony, according to a timeline published by the Daily Mail in 2020. Omar claimed she and Elmi separated in 2011, and she and Hirsi had their third child in 2012, per the Mail’s timeline, but her divorce from Elmi didn’t take place until 2017.
Omar later split from Hirsi in 2019 after marrying him in a 2018 civil ceremony before she started an affair with Democratic consultant Tim Mynett, the Daily Mail reported.
Trump announced on Nov. 22 he would end “Temporary Protected Status” for Somalis in Minneapolis in response to the allegations, and also said that the influx of refugees had “destroyed our country.”
