As the chaos within the Democrat Party continues, Politico interviewed Democrat Minnesota Reps. Ilhan Omar and Dean Phillips about the future of the party.
Omar dished out harsh words for her party, but took a particular aim at President Barack Obama.
*UPDATE 7:32PM: Omar tweeted out that Politico twisted her words, even releasing audio. One problem: the audio backs up Politico’s article.
Omar went into politics in 2016 when she ran for a state seat in Minnesota. She managed to defeat a 22-term incumbent before she decided to head to Washington.
Why did Omar choose politics and a place in Congress? If you think it’s President Donald Trump, think again (emphasis mine):
As she saw it, the party ostensibly committed to progressive values had become complicit in perpetuating the status quo. Omar says the “hope and change” offered by Barack Obama was a mirage. Recalling the “caging of kids” at the U.S.-Mexico border and the “droning of countries around the world” on Obama’s watch, she argues that the Democratic president operated within the same fundamentally broken framework as his Republican successor.“We can’t be only upset with Trump. … His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,” Omar says. “And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”
First off, she admits that caging of kids at the border began under Obama. One would think Trump started it the way the media and pundits go after him.
Back in June 2018, photos surfaced of children in cages, which the media blamed Trump. Breitbart News quickly reported that pictures came from 2014 under Obama’s tenure and that Brandon Darby (who provides excellent reports and pictures from the border) wrote about the incidents in 2014.
In April 2018, Trump asked Congress to close the loophole that separates children from their parents once they cross the border. He asked lawmakers to change it “so that minors can be swiftly deported from the U.S. with their border-crossing parents.” This has not happened yet.
Second, Omar reveals that her tone and that of other freshman Democrat representatives will not change even if the establishment tries to shut them down:
“I don’t believe that tiptoeing is the way to win the hearts and the minds of the people,” she says. “I get saddened by some of my freshman colleagues who can’t understand that within their districts the idea of Medicare for All is extremely popular. The Green New Deal is a very popular idea in their districts. Making sure that we have a final fix to our broken immigration system is very popular in their districts. What they pay attention to is the rhetoric that says, ‘This is a red-to-blue district, you have to be careful, you can’t talk about these policies.’ Well, in reality, these people are like everyone else: They struggle with the cost of health care, they struggle with our broken infrastructure, they struggle with having an economy that brings them into the 21st century. And we have to be willing to have those conversations.”—“As much as other people are uncomfortable, I’m excited about the change in tone that has taken place that is extremely positive. The insightful conversations that we’re having about money and its influence in Washington. And my ability, I think, to agitate our foreign policy discussions in a way that many of my colleagues who have been anti-intervention, anti-war have been unable to do in the past,” she says. “So, I’m OK with taking the blows if it means it will ignite conversations that no one was willing to have before.”
I suspect the Democrats will react the way they have with Omar’s anti-Semitic: nothing. I don’t know if they believe she is not a danger or that she will go away on her own, but the Democrats have always been obsessed with showing unity. Maybe Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will say that once again Omar doesn’t understand the weight of her words the way she excused Omar’s anti-Semitism.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY