Omar: Trump's retweet of bogus 9/11 dancing claim puts 'my life at risk'

Rep. Ilhan Omar accused President Trump on Wednesday of endangering her life by “continuing to spread lies” that she “partied” on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Trump shared a since-deleted tweet on Wednesday morning that purported to show the Minnesota congresswoman dancing to hip-hop star Lizzo’s hit song “Truth Hurts.” Terrence K. Williams, a conservative actor and comedian who posted the video, misled his followers by saying the footage was shot on the 18th anniversary of the attacks.

“GET THIS WOMAN OUT OF OFFICE,” Williams wrote in his tweet. “Ilhan Omar partied on the anniversary of 9/11 because she believes ‘Some People Just Did Somethings.’”

Williams added: “President Trump was bashed for playing golf On MLK day but it’s okay for Omar to party?”

The phrase “Some people did something” points back to remarks Omar made in March at a Council on American-Islamic Relations fundraiser. She said the organization “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.”

The New York Post lambasted Omar’s “Some people did something” phrasing, and Trump tweeted a selectively edited video of Omar’s remarks spliced together with footage of the Sept. 11 attacks. Supporters of Omar condemned the president’s actions as Islamophobic and noted that the congresswoman required heightened security after the tweet’s circulation.

In his retweet of the post by Williams, who thanked the president for sharing his video, Trump said, “Ilhan Omar, a member of AOC Plus 3, will win us the Great State of Minnesota. The new face of the Democrat Party!” Trump has attacked the freshman lawmakers often in recent months, telling the women to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” The group consists of four Democratic congresswomen: Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.

Omar said the video of her dancing was taken during the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference, which took place Sept. 11-15 in Washington, D.C. Original video shows Omar dancing at the conference reception on Sept. 13.

“This is from a CBC event we hosted this weekend to celebrate black women in Congress,” she wrote, responding to Trump’s tweet. “The President of the United States is continuing to spread lies that put my life at risk. What is Twitter doing to combat this misinformation?”

A few days earlier Omar defended herself against criticisms from a family member of a 9/11 victim who during a memorial reading of victims’ names at Ground Zero called out her controversial remarks.

“9/11 was an attack on all Americans,” Omar, one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “It was an attack on all of us, and I certainly could not understand the weight of the pain that the families of the victims of 9/11 must feel.

“But I think it’s important for us to make sure that we are not forgetting the aftermath of 9/11,” she added. “Many Americans found themselves now having their civil rights stripped from them, and so what I was speaking to was that as a Muslim, not only was I suffering as an American who was attacked on that day, but the next day I woke up as my fellow Americans were now treating me as suspect.”

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