White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Sunday that President Trump is not wishing “ill will” nor “violence toward anyone” after he tweeted a video showing images from the Sept. 11 attacks combined with remarks Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) gave at a recent speech.
“Certainly the president is wishing no ill will, and certainly not violence towards anyone,” Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“But the president is absolutely and should be calling out the congresswoman for her not only one time but history of anti-Semitic comments,” she added.
{mosads}Trump on Friday tweeted the video, which showed the burning World Trade Center towers and Omar saying at a speech last month at the Council on American-Islamic Relations that CAIR was founded because “some people did something” and Muslims “were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”
Omar, one of the first women elected to Congress, has been accused of anti-Semitic comments by her critics.
“It’s absolutely abhorrent the comments she continues to make and has made and (Democrats) look the other way,” Sanders added on Sunday. “I find what her comments to be absolutely disgraceful and unbefitting of a member of Congress and I think that it’s a good thing that the president is calling her out for those comments, and the big question is why aren’t Democrats doing it as well.”
Democratic presidential candidates have criticized Trump’s tweet.
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke called it “an incitement to violence.”
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said it was “vicious, crass” and “disgusting.”