Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) slammed President Trump on Saturday after he tweeted an edited video of comments from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) about the 9/11 attacks that have sparked criticism.
“The memory of 9/11 is sacred ground, and any discussion of it must be done with reverence. The President shouldn’t use the painful images of 9/11 for a political attack,” Pelosi said in a statement.
{mosads}“It is wrong for the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to fan the flames to make anyone less safe,” she added.
The video, which Trump tweeted Friday, shows Omar speaking to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in March spliced together with video of the 9/11 attacks. Omar’s comments that “some people did something” — referring to 9/11 — appear between segments of footage and text memorializing the deadly attacks.
Conservatives have seized on Omar’s remarks, with Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) bashing them as “unbelievable” and Fox News host Brian Kilmeade saying on air, “You have to wonder if she’s an American first.”
However, much of the criticism against Omar leaves out the end of her quote, in which she says many Muslims were unfairly connected with the attacks.
“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,” she said.
CAIR was founded in 1994, but Omar’s office has said she misspoke and meant to note that the organization doubled in size after the 2001 attacks.
Several Democrats running for president in 2020 rushed to Omar’s defense on Friday, with some arguing that Trump’s move put Omar and others in danger.
“The President is inciting violence against a sitting Congresswoman—and an entire group of Americans based on their religion. It’s disgusting. It’s shameful. And any elected leader who refuses to condemn it shares responsibility for it,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted.