Republicans, Once Again, Call For Rep. Ilhan Omar To Be Reported After Elon Musk Shared Fake Video

Source: Andrew Harnik / Getty

White Republicans have demonstrated over the years that they are absolutely incapable of being critical of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) without being vehemently racist, Islamaphobic and xenophobic. Well, Elon Musk, as well as other members of the MAGA Klan, have demonstrated recently that they’re not only racist, Islamaphobic and xenophobic, but they’re also ignorant of the law and unable to discern video footage that is obviously edited.

On Tuesday, Musk, the guy who is supposed to be a tech genius, reposted unmistakably (you would think, anyway) edited video footage that purported to show Omar speaking to a room of undocumented Somali immigrants, educating them on how to evade deportation. In reality, it was video footage of a room full of random brown people, which was then spliced with footage of Omar speaking to different people in a different room, explaining that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees have a right not to answer questions, which is protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution white conservatives pretend to love so much. (I’m convinced the vast majority of them have never read past the Second Amendment, which they also didn’t read thoroughly.)

“She is breaking the law. Literally. Outright,” Musk captioned his post.

Yeah — it’s “literally” not against the law to inform anyone of their rights, which doesn’t really matter since Omar was actually not in the room the video purports her to be in.

https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1886864305720823827

“Hey Elon, every single person in this country deserves to know their rights. That’s legal. Maybe you should brush up on our laws given the fact you’re breaking them to steal American’s sensitive data,” Omar posted, referring to Musk being handed the keys to the Treasury Department’s federal payment system. “PS. This video is manipulated, and I wasn’t even at the event shown.”

So, just to recap: Musk, the foreigner who President Donald Trump appointed to his Department of Government Efficiency and granted access to banking info he definitely shouldn’t have — and who is, again, supposed to be a tech genius — reposted a video he should have known was edited and demonstrated that he doesn’t know the law by claiming what Omar was not really doing constitutes her “breaking the law,” which wouldn’t have been the case even if the video was authentic.

Of course, Musk being loud and demonstrably wrong hasn’t stopped other Republicans from hopping on the loud, wrong and racist bandwagon, including a first-term Texas lawmaker who suggested that Omar, a U.S. citizen who has been in America since she was eight years old, should be deported.

At the very least, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) was responding to actual video of Omar telling a reporter., “You are not obligated to answer their questions. Just state that you are advised by a lawyer not to answer questions,” which is true.

“Disclosure of your name, immigration status, and the mode of entry is not mandatory,” she continued. “Learn the laws and prepare yourself and refrain from disclosing information that you prefer them not to know.”

One would think that a Constitution-loving patriot would applaud a legislator for telling people to be informed of their rights. Apparently, that doesn’t apply to a Black woman from a foreign country telling migrants they also have constitutional protections.

From The Hill:

“America would be a better place if @IlhanMN were deported back to Somalia,” Gill wrote Tuesday on the social platform X.

Gill, a first-term lawmaker representing Texas’s 26th Congressional District, was responding to a clip another X user shared Tuesday of the Minnesota Democrat’s recent interview with a reporter.

Thirty minutes later, in another post, Gill wrote that “we should have never let Ilhan Omar into our country.”

Omar came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1995 and became a naturalized citizen at 17 years old in 2000.

A spokesperson for Gill told The Hill, “Representative Omar’s conduct raises questions about to whom she is most loyal- the American people or illegal aliens from Somalia. Representative Gill simply stated that it is disgraceful for a sitting Congresswoman and US citizen to facilitate the invasion of our country by illegal alien Somalis.”

Source: Tom Williams / Getty

Incidentally, Republicans tried this same thing with Ilhan Omar right around this time last year after a media outlet mistranslated a speech she gave, including the words “Somalians first,” which accurate translators revealed she never said anything remotely close to.

This sent the world of MAGA right-wingers who probably don’t read anyway into a tailspin, which resulted in barely-closeted white nationalist Marjorie Taylor Greene filing an unsuccessful resolution to censure Omar, which she said isn’t going far enough because Omar should also be deported.

But, again, this is just par for the MAGA course when it comes to Republicans responding to Omar with seething bigotry because she’s a Black Muslim woman who is unabashedly outspoken.

Greene once suggested that Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), who is also Muslim, weren’t “really official” members of Congress because they didn’t take the oath of office on the Bible and said they “should go back to the Middle East” despite Omar not being from there. Greene also joined Rep. Lauren Boebert in referring to Omar as a “Jihad Squad” member, which is among the things that resulted in the stripping of her own committee assignments. And who could forget Trump himself insisting that the “Squad” members should go back where they came from despite the congresswomen all being U.S. citizens who were born and/or raised in America?

You know — maybe these people are just racist. 

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