Ilhan Omar believes she doesn’t need to answer any questions she doesn’t feel like answering
Ilhan Omar is dealing with a lot of accusations, but she has one way of dealing with them, and it’s an approach that worked very very well for her so far and may continue to do so: calling anyone who questions her a racist and refusing to dignify their questions with an answer.
Sound familiar?
National media had largely kept away from judging the merits of the accusation that [Omar] was related to her second husband, which have circulated since her entry into politics in 2016, but after Trump’s comment many came to quick conclusions. CNN’s Jim Acosta jumped in immediately to criticize Trump for diving in on “disgusting lies.” The Daily Beast‘s Will Sommer published a lengthy piece on Friday that did little to nothing to debunk what he calls a “baseless smear.”…
Omar has consistently been unwilling to answer questions since the allegation first surfaced. Her team’s first on-the-record statement regarding whether she was married to her brother, to a PowerLine reporter in August 2016, was a refusal to answer questions.
“There are people who do not want an East African, Muslim woman elected to office and who will follow Donald Trump’s playbook to prevent it,” a campaign spokesman said, months before she was first elected. “Ilhan Omar’s campaign will not be distracted by negative forces and will continue to focus its energy on creating positive engagement with community members to make the district and state more prosperous and equitable for everyone.”…
Her office’s only recent comment on the marriage issue has been an attempt to dissuade “legitimate media outlets” from investigating it.
“Whether by colluding with right-wing outlets to go after Muslim elected officials or hounding family members, legitimate media outlets have a responsibility not to fan the flames of hate,” her office said. “Continuing to do so is not only demeaning to Ilhan, but to her entire family.”
The accusations about Omar’s marriage to a man who possibly is her brother is actually not a charge of incest, because part of the accusation is that it was a marriage in name only, perhaps for the purpose of immigration fraud. Omar’s position is that answering such charges is beneath her because they are slurs. Well, they do indeed reflect poorly on her if true, but there is actually a lot of evidence that’s been amassed that they may indeed be true, and it is indisputably true that she is guilty of filing fraudulent tax returns based on who her legal spouse may have been at a particular time.
Omar is counting on the fact that it has become nearly impossible to accuse a “person of color” of anything bad. Evidence doesn’t matter, even actual guilt doesn’t matter. Racism accusations have long been a powerful tool, and in recent years such charges have been elevated to almost unassailable.
But perhaps the public is tiring of this. I know I am. Perhaps the general public sees that the charge of “racism” has become all-purpose, and constitutes a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone in a designated victim group.
That’s not the way it should work. If equality under the law means anything, it should mean that. But hey, isn’t equality under the law just one of those white-supremacist notions now, if it is used in a way that doesn’t suit the left’s purposes?
Of course she doesn’t need to answer questions she deems negative. She had nearly absolute amnesty from the dinosaur media. There are many others who can say nearly anything without fear of correction.
Indeed, she is right.
If they really want to get her, they’ll probably have to do it on immigration fraud.
On the other hand, Hillary has escaped prosecution for how many years now? So quite likely Omar will just have to continue standing on her “dignity” while attacking everyone else who might dare wonder why she needed two husbands. (To be sure, the rationale of “faith tradition” goes a mighty long way to explain everything…as long as we’re talking about the “right” faith tradition.)
In any event, the “extravaganza” (AKA shite show) that she and her colleague will be putting on in Israel next month will show anyone and everyone that she will not be deterred. After all, the best defense is, as they say, to be incredibly offensive (once again, as long as one is being offensive to the right people).
File under: See Nancy and Chuck squirm….
I am waiting for Commey, Clapper, et al to come out as Trans Black so that anything you say against them is Racist and Sexist. A Double!
Not a bad idea, actually.
But Comey had better act quickly:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-22/comey-under-doj-investigation-misleading-trump-while-targeting-him-fbi-probe
The Left’s fanaticism is leading them into making grave errors in judgement. “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad” Prometheus, The Masque of Pandora 1875
Can you say, “Typical Leftist”, boys and girls? Yes, I KNEW you could.
On the other hand, Comey’s best defense might be that since he lives in an alternate (if not quite parallel) universe, he can’t possibly be responsible for anything he says or does (or “forgets” or “can’t remember”):
https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1153162543894093824
Yes, the tried and true “Alternate Universe” defense.
(Seems to work well in France, at least:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/french-judge-rules-jewish-womans-killer-not-responsible-because-he-smoked-weed/ )
The US Attorney in MN could indict her but he won’t.
Why can’t the left sees that using your race and minority status as a shield to deflect legit criticisms or get special treatments is racism?
Dave…didn’t you get the memo?
Only white folks can be racist. It’s that whole “privilege” thing.
White folks can’t point out error or anything that non-whites do…and non-whites don’t ever have to answer even questions are beneath their dignity.
I think I got that right.
I’ll have to check with some of the progressives I know.
She and her team are one big taqiyya machine.
Ha ha. There “actually a lot of evidence” that Omar married her brother (although said evidence remain conspicuously absent from these pages) but Trump’s DOJ and FBI hasn’t done a damn thing about it.
How do you tolerate such incompetence?
One day you will wake up an realize that “Trump has not built a single mile of new border fence after 30 months in office.”
You will then realize that he never even tried. Then it will all make sense.
Omer had three children with her current husband, after the birth of their second child and before the birth of their third child they got divorced and Omer married another dude Elmi then quickly Omer divorced elmi after two years and remarried her first and current husband. Even if elmi wasn’t her brother, there is probable cause to suspect that she might have helped a man whom she wasn’t romantically related obtain permanent residence status through gaming the system by divorcing her real husband temporarily for three years to marry a man who might or might not be her brother in between.
She’s doing a slightly more sophisticated version of what that white haired black Georgia senator was doing in the Publix video. Shuck and jive and don’t answer the questions.
Manju on July 22, 2019 at 10:42 pm said:
…
One day you will wake up an realize that “Trump has not built a single mile of new border fence after 30 months in office.”
You will then realize that he never even tried. Then it will all make sense.
* * *
Your cited post doesn’t support your thesis.
It details, quite clearly, the reasons why border wall building may have lagged, despite Trump’s clear efforts to push it forward: they concentrated on repairs first (environmental & regulatory issues already cleared); the Democrats & their partisan judges (contra Chief Justice Roberts) have sandbagged construction; and Resistors insist on not recognizing any barrier other than a full-fence as fulfilling Trump’s promise.*
Try this post instead:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2019/07/22/good-news-weve-finished-50-miles-of-new-border-wall-n2550410
*Same quibbling as evidenced here:
https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2019/07/23/politifact-clowns-calling-rights-claim-aoc-crying-empty-parking-lot-false/
Manju:
You comment, “One day you will wake up an realize that ‘Trump has not built a single mile of new border fence after 30 months in office.’ You will then realize that he never even tried.”
I’m willing to be persuaded by what you’re suggesting. (I can’t say that you’re asserting it, because you haven’t directly done so. I guess you’re saying that Trump was never interested in reducing illegal immigration into the United States, didn’t mind one whit if it actually increased, and that all his posturing on the topic was mere campaign-stop deceit.)
I’ve long held that Trump only communicates things about his worldview through policy-actions, and never through words; and that he uses words exclusively in order to “push buttons on reality to see what happens.” (If what happens is advantageous or entertaining, he pushes them again until it stops working.) If this thesis is correct, then his Twitter feed is literally the most successful disinformation program ever fielded by the U.S. Government: It comes straight from the U.S. President, but nothing written therein has any relationship to anything the U.S. President believes to be true about the world, but only about what provokes politically helpful reactions in readers.
So, like I said above, I’m willing to be persuaded that Trump prioritizes reducing illegal immigration at zero or below-zero priority level. Nothing he’s ever said on the topic counts as evidence to the contrary, because he said it using words.
HOWEVER…,
1. The article you link doesn’t support the idea that Trump doesn’t care about reducing illegal immigration. At best, the article supports the idea that he is more ambivalent about it than his rhetoric lets on. But the article is also consistent with other explanations; such as that he…
(a.) is hamstrung by lack of legislative support because of the Democrat-controlled House (and before that, the functionally-equivalent control of the House by GOP establishment types who don’t much care to stop illegal immigration);
(b.) didn’t prioritize it highly enough to completely exhaust all of the (paucity of) allocated funds before now;
(c.) saw regions of the existing fence requiring repair as higher-priority than constructing new regions in unfenced areas, probably because those fence-regions were already positioned in higher-value areas; and/or,
(d.) didn’t want to move to complete the wall too quickly (even supposing that he could) because if he did, he’d lose one of his base’s strongest incentives for prioritizing his re-election efforts.
2. Please remember that the President of the United States has, constitutionally, very limited-and-indirect domestic power, especially “power of the purse.” To show that Trump really doesn’t give a crap about reducing illegal immigration, one has to show that there are things he could have done but didn’t. It’s trivially true that he couldn’t possibly have gotten a whole-length-of-the-border massive barrier constructed by now, even with a House that was populated by 435 anti-illegal-immigration “hawks.” But instead of that, he’s had a majority of pro-illegal-immigration Democrats since 2018, and a majority of soft-on-illegal-immgration Republicans before that.
So you have to ask, first, what he could have done under those circumstances. Then you follow that up by asking, “Of the things he could have done but didn’t, are there any reasons other than deceiving his base that explain why he hasn’t done them yet?”
Finally you have to ask, “Do his other policy moves suggest a lack of concern about illegal immigration?”
After you’ve provided a compelling argument in all those stages, you’ll persuade me that Trump is completely uninterested in reducing illegal immigration.
But at present, I believe he is interested in reducing it, because…
(a.) he’s repaired border fences in high-priority areas, which he didn’t have to;
(b.) he changed the asylum rules, which he didn’t have to;
(c.) his best play for re-election is to show himself as being constantly obstructed by wailing, unhinged Democrats, while trying to keep his promises in a broad sense (reducing illegal immigration) even if he’s unable to keep them in a narrow sense (specifically building a “big beautiful wall”). That allows him to paint a contrast between himself and Democrats as a contrast between a mostly-honest half-liar who’s brash and inexact but tries to do what he’s elected to do, and insane, anarchistic, totalitarian maniacs who want open borders.
As I said, I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise. But my current view, I think, fits better with the evidence on hand.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/dozens-of-documents-indicate-ilhan-omar-lived-with-ahmed-hirsi-while-claiming-to-be-married-to-ahmed-elmi
In what culture it is common practice that a married couple would take a short break from a long 17 years of marriage so the wife could go legally marry some random dude off the street temporarily for three years, while evidently still remained to be living with the original husband the whole time?
“I see no irregularity here, Omar could marry whomever she wanted to” – still said by liberals
Dave on July 23, 2019 at 2:26 pm said:
In what culture it is common practice that a married couple would take a short break from a long 17 years of marriage so the wife could go legally marry some random dude off the street temporarily for three years, while evidently still remained to be living with the original husband the whole time?
* * *
Well said, and I have not seen it phrased that way before, somewhat surprisingly.
No one wants to touch “my faith tradition” marriages with a 10-foot-pole, because, (obviously) racist Islamophobic sexist.
Clearly, it’s racist, sexist and Islamophobic to insist (or even expect) that a woman remember who her husband is at any particular time.
Even worse, it’s terribly uncouth. Boorish. Unmannerly.
Such things are simply not done.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/07/lets_talk_about_real_discrimination.html
“I don’t answer questions” To Authority/Police
R.C.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I base my opinion on this:
1. When Trump had control of both Houses, there is no evidence of him twisting arms to get his number 1 promise thru. Had he put up great fight and lost, I wouldn’t have said what I said.
But there was nothing. No “Cornhusker Kickback” to use Scala’s reference to what Obama did to get Obamacare thru a filibuster-proof majority. Whether you like his policies or not, you all saw Obama take office and push thru his biggest promises: Obamacare and a Keynesian Stimulus that has led to the longest expansion in US history.
We simply didn’t see this with Trump, even on Repeal and Replace. He had no plan for McCain to support. I suspect the reports that he gets into the office at 10 and golfs by 12 are true, and in line with his record of failure as a businessman.
2. General Kelly has said as much…that Trump, early in his term, gave up on the wall once he realized that it wasn’t logistically possible.
3. All the illegal immigrants working for him, even into his Presidential term, lend credence to the notion that he really doesn’t care about the issue.
4. The issue reappeared as obvious propaganda (an Invasion) during the midterms and then after he lost control of the House, i.e. after it became politically impossible for him to build the wall.
5. He has said that the wall was already built. This indicates that what he really wanted was for people to think he’s built one, as opposed to actually building one. This is in-line with his career of claiming to be a self-made billionaire. He’s more interested in people believing he is one than he is in becoming one.
I believe Trump would’ve been happy if his base went along with that lie the way they did with other ones…like N.Korea has denuclearized or that he turned around the economy. But here was a rebellion, led by Ann Coulter. That’s why we are hearing about it now.
It’s starting.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-23/ethics-complaint-filed-against-rep-ilhan-omar-accused-immigration-tax-and-student
Surely there must be a reasonable explanation (with which to be “dignified”?)….
Manju – you made some interesting observations, although I’m not sure we see them the same way. The news filters on both sides of the aisle are very partisan (see my comment above about AOC and the FactCheckers).
However, I wonder if Trump is now deliberately dragging things out.
There was too much Democrat and Republican opposition to a full-scale building project the last two years, but support for more control & stopping the influx of would-be migrants is growing with the increased pressure on the border, and may flip the public, and the Congress, more in his direction if it continues.
Democrats & Leftists don’t have a monopoly on exploiting crises, real or fake.
Manju states that the Republicans are a herd of cats under President Trump and the Democrats were a “borg” under Obama. Oh for the good old days of BHO.
Manju longs for another “borg” experience and pines for the mental fijords.