Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) slammed a CNN analyst for calling her fellow “squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) a “public relations agent for Hamas” on Wednesday.
“How on earth is this kind of blatant Islamophobia so casually accepted without pushback? This is shocking,” Ocasio-Cortez said Wednesday in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Her post came in response to a clip of Republican strategist Scott Jennings on CNN’s “NewsNight” in which he said he is “surprised, that in the year of our Lord 2024, there is a public relations agent for Hamas sitting in the United States Congress,” in response to an earlier interview with Omar.
Other members of the “squad” also criticized Jennings for his comments, which Omar retweeted.
“Scott Jennings’ comments are reminiscent of the anti-Muslim bigotry we saw in the George Bush post-9/11 era,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said in a post on X. “It is disgusting and must not be normalized. CNN should denounce this hateful, dangerous and blatant Islamophobia immediately.”
Rep. Ayanna Pressley said, “Blatant Islamophobia has no place in our society — let alone on primetime TV.”
“It’s dangerous, unacceptable, and cannot be normalized,” she said on X.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) called Jennings’s comments “disgustingly racist and Islamophobic” and said comments similar to the ones he made “are extremely dangerous and fuel anti-muslim hate crimes.”
“CNN should never have him on again!” Bowman continued.
Jennings’s comments followed an interview with Omar in which she said it was her understanding that Israel didn’t show up to negotiations in Egypt for a cease-fire.
“It was Israel that refused to send negotiators to be at the table to carve out — you have to remember that a cease-fire is not something that happens magically,” Omar said.
The Hill has reached out to CNN, Omar’s office and Jennings.
Updated at 1:53 p.m.