Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is preposterously claiming that remarks Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., made in the Somali language to a Somali audience in Minneapolis on Saturday were “treasonous” and warrant her being censured by the House. Omar’s Republican colleague from Minnesota, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, has called for an ethics investigation into what she said and absurdly said that she should “resign in disgrace.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says that she should be expelled from Congress, stripped of her citizenship and deported.
After Omar’s remarks were mistranslated, they were then stripped of their context and amplified by bad-faith critics
The right-wing reactions stem from a video of Omar’s speech that went viral on the platform X and features captions translating her remarks. But the source of that translation is unclear, and the language appears to be either poorly translated or deliberately mistranslated, according to multiple fact-checkers. One news source that Emmer linked to, Alpha News, acknowledged in its article that it had “not independently verified the accuracy of the translation.” It should have done so before running with the story.
After Omar’s remarks were mistranslated, they were then stripped of their context and amplified by bad-faith critics such as Greene and others. In reality, there was nothing untoward about Omar’s remarks. Calls for her censure and, more outrageously, her deportation, are simply the latest manifestation of the rank xenophobia that animates the Republican Party.
Omar spoke at a Minneapolis hotel Saturday at a celebration of regional elections in Somalia. She was born in Somalia and, after fleeing the country’s civil war, came to the U.S. in the 1990s as a refugee. (Omar became a U.S. citizen at the age of 17.) So there’s nothing strange about her commenting on Somali political life or identifying with it.
A critical bit of context for understanding Omar’s remarks is that she was…
Read the full article here
