Rep. Ilhan Omar is in a very special category: black, Muslim and a refugee from Somalia. It's a triple-banger, like Karine Jean-Pierre, always touted as black, lesbian and Haitian. Never question their prominence on the merits. It's a born-on-third-base situation in national politics and media.
So when Omar submits herself to television interviews from liberal networks, she knows she can say inflammatory things and not be seriously challenged. On CBS's Face the Nation, the topic was Renee Good being shot after she drove into an ICE agent with her SUV. Omar claimed Good was "sitting in her car peacefully," and then the ICE agent "shouldn't be trying to get in front of a moving car." Good was right whether she was in Park or in Drive. On top of that, Team Trump shouldn't defend the ICE agent, because "we can see in the videos that have been produced so far that what they are describing is really not what is taking place."
This is engaging in denialism. It's obvious from the ICE agent's video that he was struck by Good's car. CBS host Margaret Brennan didn't challenge Omar on that, or anything else about the incident. She only pushed back by vaguely stipulating there has been violence against ICE agents. This agent was previously run over by a car in his official capacity. That's not relevant when you've decided that in every instance, ICE and Trump are the villains.
That wasn't as outrageous as Omar's appearance later on MS NOW's The Weekend: Primetime. Over half an hour, all the questions were designed to elicit her talking points. Co-host Antonia Hylton asked: "In the wake of someone being shot and killed, are you worried that more of your constituents' lives will be at risk? Are you worried at all as they pull out their cellphones, as they interact with these officers, that that might just, frankly, not be safe?"
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Omar broke out the conspiracy theories: "What this administration is looking for is for there to be deadly encounters so that they can invoke the Insurrection Act and have martial law. And it is a dangerous, dangerous escalation that they're looking for."
But it's the second segment of this interview that shocked the conservative world, when they asked Omar about fighting welfare fraud, as if Omar isn't connected to Somalis who benefited from fraud schemes, including employees of her campaigns.
MS NOW star Ayman Mohyeldin disparaged "conservative YouTuber" Nick Shirley and complained, "We have politicians making decisions based off of conspiracy theories. I'm just wondering what you make of that and how dangerous that is, that our politicians are falling for this."
Omar lamented that anyone would fall for the idea that "Democrats condone this fraud," and suggested all the fraud prosecutions occurred under the Biden administration. That's not true. But Omar was on a roll, attacking Team Trump: "I'm so exhausted in trying to ask what any of this, you know, information has led to you finding any criminals that you have indicted, that explains why you are wasting so much of our taxpayer resources."
U.S. attorneys under Biden achieved about 60 fraud convictions, many of them Somalis, and that effort continues under Trump. That's not "wasting" taxpayer dollars. It's trying to punish people who stole money from social programs.
Shameless Ilhan Omar doesn't have to worry about journalists bothering her with challenging questions about her conspiracy theories or her connections to fraudsters, or her booming net worth and if that was ethically gained. "Diversity, equity and inclusion" goals translate to media coddling, polishing and defusing.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
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