"Ilhan Omar, whatever the hell her name is, with the little – with the little turban, I love her. She comes in, does nothing but bitch." "Ilhan Omar is garbage. Her friends are garbage. […] These aren't people that work.
These aren't people that say, let's go. Come on, let's make this place great. These are people that do nothing but complain." "She comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military, where all they do is shoot each other.
And she comes into our country, and she says, 'I have a constitutional right.' She's telling us about the constitution, and she comes from one of the worst countries anywhere on the planet." These are just three of Donald Trump's many attacks on US Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Few people have been targeted as ferociously by the US president. But why has Trump singled her out for such hostility?
Ilhan Abdullahi Omar, 44, was born in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. She fled the civil war in the country while still a child, and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. She finally came with her family to the US in 1995, at the age of 12, and became a US citizen in 2000.
She joined the Democratic Party, and made a career as a politician on the party's left wing. Since January 2019, she has served as representative for the state of Minnesota and one of the first two Muslim women to enter the US Congress. Ilhan Omar is a practising Muslim who wears a hijab, and Congress altered a 180-year-old rule for her that prohibited head coverings in the chamber of the House of Representatives.
Politically and socially, Omar champions progressive values, and often makes a connection between her faith and her commitment to social justice, human rights, and the protection of minorities. Omar campaigns on issues such as universal health insurance, increasing the minimum wage, climate protection, and the cancellation of student debt. She is also one of Donald Trump's most prominent and outspoken critics, repeatedly accusing him of racism and systematically fomenting hatred against minorities, immigrants, and Muslims.
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