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I’m Afraid for Ilhan Omar’s Safety.
The danger in minimizing the threats against her life.
To many on the left, seeing a young Muslim refugee who also happened to be a black woman representing her community in Congress was absolutely incredible, and an indication that we may have made some progress as a nation.
To others, her very existence is a threat to the status quo.
Just the sight of her hijab is considered an act of provocation, and has caused many in the right wing to call in to question whether her religion could prevent her from upholding their American “values”. Everyone from FOX News hosts to the President himself have continued to stir up and provoke aggression towards the congresswoman. Just one day after a man called her office and threatened to put a bullet in her skull, the President tweeted an inflammatory video of 9/11 footage with wildly out of context statements that Omar made as the background noise.
The President knows what his base is capable of, and he knew exactly what he was doing.
Tweeting that video was nothing less than a blatant incitement of violence against a sitting member of Congress. It was a wink and a nod, and in his mind a clever, subtle way of asking them: “what are you going to do about this?”
