WaPo Rushes to Defend Ilhan Omar’s 9/11 Remarks, Fails Spectacularly
Omar is using Kessler’s absurd fact check to equate her remarks to Bush’s bullhorn address at Ground Zero after 9/11.
It’s like clockwork. When a prominent Democrat lands themselves in hot water, the Washington Post oftentimes publishes puff pieces or fact checks defending them.
They did it with Virginia House Delegate Kathy Tran over her infanticide bill and with Gov. Ralph Northam’s defense of it. Now they’re doing it with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-5), who recently noted that 9/11 was perpetrated when “some people did something.”
A video surfaced this week of Omar speaking at a CAIR banquet in California in late March. During the speech, she said this about the 9/11 terrorist attacks (bolded emphasis added):
“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”
First things first: CAIR was not “founded after 9/11.” They were founded in 1994. Secondly, radical Islamists carrying out the horrific attacks that killed almost 3,000 innocent people are a lot more than just “some people [who] did something.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX-2) was among the many public figures and politicians who blasted Omar’s comments:
First Member of Congress to ever describe terrorists who killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 as “some people who did something”.
Unbelievable. https://t.co/IKtoZWWmIT
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) April 9, 2019
The New York Post responded, too, with a powerful Thursday front page:
https://twitter.com/SohrabAhmari/status/1116330838298374147
Her defenders said she was taken out of context, but she wasn’t. Here’s the transcript of the relevant portion of her speech:
Rep. Ilhan Omar: 'Raise Hell, Make People Uncomfortable', 'Tired' of US Muslims 'Being a Second-Class Citizen' by @JerylBier https://t.co/5dEmuQrYM0 pic.twitter.com/BVXNSvSgWj
— __TheScript__ (@__TheScript__) April 11, 2019
Several minutes before she made her comments about the 9/11 attacks being about “some people [who] did something”, she described the New Zealand mosque attacks as a “tragic, tragic nightmare.” So one was a tragic nightmare, while the other was just “some people” doing “something”?
Here’s the full video, which I’ve set to start where this portion of her speech started (around 3:07):
The Washington Post, in full white knight mode, rushed to Omar’s defense in publishing a piece in which they claimed context was needed.
After quoting several lines from her speech (which did not change what she said), “fact checker” Glenn Kessler wrote:
We will leave it to readers to determine whether Omar should have referred to “terrorists” or if the context for “some people” is clear from the speech.
When we listened to the whole speech, we were reminded of President George W. Bush’s phrasing in two famous moments after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!” – Bullhorn address to Ground Zero rescue workers, Sept. 14, 2001
The other one was an Islamic Center speech in which President Bush defended Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11.
Kessler suggests that Bush’s bullhorn comments and the ones he made defending Muslims were no different than Omar’s speech.
In reality, the context surrounding Bush’s speeches meant everything after the terrorist attacks. He was by no means downplaying what happened. In the coming weeks and months, his administration would respond forcefully to the attacks.
On the other hand, the context the Post provided for Omar’s speech didn’t do her any justice. In fact, the context provided by the full video made her “some people did something” quote even worse.
Making things worse still is Omar’s widely-known reputation for repeating anti-Semitic tropes, which is a significant context for drawing conclusions about what Omar says all on its own.
No biggie, though. She’s just using Kessler’s fact check to equate her remarks to Bush’s bullhorn address at Ground Zero after 9/11.
“The people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!” President George W. Bush
Was Bush downplaying the terrorist attack?
What if he was a Muslim ? https://t.co/XMazssoD49
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) April 12, 2019
Mission accomplished. Right, WaPo?
–Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter.–
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Comments
WAPO follows the liberal pattern:
Defend your own people always.
Attack your opponents with anything at hand. Always.
These Libs are trash.
Think we would win bets that Omar has Donated to Terrorist Organizations?????
Follow all her money.
Omar is mistaken, no one considers Muslims 2nd class citizens, more like 10th class.
People like Omar aren’t really citizens at all because they have no allegiance to our country. They only have allegiance to their ideology, and intend to make that dominant over us all, whether by conversion or death.
Ilhan Omar violated her Oath of Office as she was taking it, since the Oath requires that the person “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;” which she does not and will not ever do.
Her true faith and allegiance is elsewhere, and she is a domestic enemy!
Omar was playing to her audience. The audience views themselves as victims of persecution, even though such persecution does not exist and didn’t exist after 9/11/2001. Whether she shares these views is not known, with any certainty, even though she probably does. Of course, she is a refugee from a lawless, pre-feudal “country” [Somalia] so she probably has a huge, inferiority complex going for her.
She should have qualified her statement by referring to the people responsible for the 9/11 attacks as a fringe group of radical Muslims, who did not represent the larger Muslim-American community. She did not, though. So, the appropriate response would have been to acknowledge her poor choice of words, substitute those I mentioned above and moved on. The controversy would have evaporated.
Of course, there is nothing she can do about her claim that Muslim-Americans faced any real danger of losing any of their civil rights, in this country, follow the attacks.
But, CAIR exists, since 9/11, for the same reason that every other “civil rights” group does; to protect its “membership” from imaginary bigotry. Without the specter of endemic bigotry and the danger of imminent persecution based upon this non-existent bigotry, the organization would cease to have any relevance and would cease to exist. Omar was acting as a fund raiser for the organization.
CAIR is the PR operation on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Yes it is. With the stated goal of bringing sharia law to govern America, including the confiscation and taxing of infidel goods and income.
Cair was founded by three low life ex IAP members. Thier nonprofit status should be canceled, right after that they three founders should be canceled.
And as terror orgs, they need to be banned!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Yes, and CAIR was founded in 1994, not in response to 9/11.
CAIR does not exist to defend its constituency from imaginged “persecution.” It exists to deflect legitimate criticism of Islam and its adherents (including the “moderate” ones who refuse to condemn their religion’s extremists) and to mislead the public concerning how radical Islam operates (esp. in America). It is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood the works for the furtherance of Islam and Sharia in America.
No, the leadership of CAIR has embraced the American Dream. They want money and power. Since 9/11, the focus of the organization has changed from doing PR work for radical Islamic organizations and fund raising for those organizations to feathering its own nest. Does this mean that CAIR does not actively lobby to force the ascendancy of Sharia law in the US? Nope. Does it mean that CAIR does not support global ascendancy of Islam? Nope. But, CAIR is far more than what it was in 1994. It has visions of being a major player in the USA. The leadership now relies very heavily upon the support of its membership for political power within the US. And, it gains that support by convincing a laegw portion of its membership that 1) such bigotry does exist and 2) that it exists to protect them from that bigotry. CAIR has Muslim members and supporters who do not desire the US to be made over into a another feudal Islamic nation, they are just afraid of discrimination. And, that is who Omar was playing to.
“CAIR has Muslim members and supporters who do not desire the US to be made over into a another feudal Islamic nation…”
No, they do not.
Islam is not a religion, it is more properly a theocracy.
There are laws against conspiring to overthrow the US gubbmint, yet Islam has this openly stated objective at its core, as well as the rest of the planet.
The koran is written by one man in his own lifetime. It states that when passages contradict one another, follow the passage later in the book. The peaceful tolerant passages are early, with the murderous commands written later.
The koran tells believers that allah deceived everyone by making it appear that Christ died on the cross. A quick read of Dr Raymond Moody’s ‘life after life’ provides objective evidence that it is impossible for God to lie and impossible for you to lie in his presence. These facts present an ironclad case that allah is actually satan
One only need to examine the horrors perpetrated on the residence of everywhere this theocracy has been allowed to take hold and become a majority part of the population.
Satan is not rightfully protected by any part of the Constitution
Long ago, immigrants wanted to come here to be an American.
Now the goal is to come here and raise hell and make me uncomfortable in my own country?
I tell this disgusting human being to go to hell.
Omar is utterly vile, a transparent and unrepentant Jew-hater, Muslim supremacist, and, to top it all off, a total ingrate vis-a-vis the U.S., as she constantly denigrates the country which took her in and effectively saved her from the dysfunction, misery and oppression wrought upon her native land of Somalia by the innumerable and intrinsic pathologies of her chosen ideology, “Submission.”
Give Omar this, though — she is able to accurately take the temperature of the current Leftist political environment, and, to cunningly gauge and exploit Leftist sensibilities. Thus, she is able to play the identity tribalism, contrived “victim” role to absolute perfection, brandishing her trifecta status as an African-born, Muslim woman as a shield to inoculate her against any scintilla of criticism for her odious bigotry.
And, of course, the Dhimmi-crats/Dumb-o-crats, with their gleeful embrace of the mythology of Muslim victimhood, and, rabid Jew-hatred (masked under the fig leaves of anti-Israel/anti-Zionism venom), are only to happy to oblige Omar and her ilk.
she needs to have her naturalization revoked and be sent home where she belongs.
I think she should be air dropped, and given a chance to purchase a parachute for $1000000. No money, then she can start flapping her arms like they are wings, that would divert energy from her obnoxious yap.
A valid naturalization cannot ever be revoked. (Of course if it was not valid then it doesn’t need to be revoked. For instance Rasmea Odeh was never a citizen in the first place.)
“The people”
“Some people”
The definite article versus the indefinite one.
Makes all the difference in the world. Unless your intent is not to acknowledge any difference.
Politico caught in a total fabrication of Trump’s visit to Mt. Vernon. Making out Trump to be a boorish illiterate.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/04/shattered-mount-vernon-exposes-politicos-very-fake-news-story-about-trumps-visit-to-george-washingtons-estate/
It’s not the “Some people” part. That, people could easily let go. It’s the “something” part. I feel diminished as a human being that Kessler tried to downplay the actual important part of a brief sentence.
Actually, I think most people would let the “something” go too — if it weren’t for the fact that the Left has never extended such a charitable interpretation to things a conservative has said.
Anyone who makes a habit of hearing dog whistles in innocuous remarks has no ground to complain when similar suspicions are applied to their own speech.
Ilhan Omar is on record as saying she ‘will never assimilate or accept American Culture’. If she were a Conservative, the RINO and Molechite Long Knives would be unsheathed and Ilhan would no longer have her ‘Little Somalia’ District.
“Some people did something. Just a harmless prank. No one got hurt. A little property damage maybe. No big deal. I don’t understand why I am being persecuted for saying this. President Bush said the same and no one got upset with him. Oh wait a minute. See this! It’s called a race card. The reason I’m being attacked is because of racist, hateful, Islamophobic Trumpkins who seek to oppress lawful immigrants, that’s why.”
Suppose liberal Senator Mazie Keiko Hirono from Hawaii, while speaking at the Battleship Missouri in Pearl Harbor said, “I stand here today at the very spot where some people did something on Dec 7, 1941.” That would be somewhat similar to Omar’s put down of the victims and survivors or 9/11.
9/11 is a Date which will live in Infamy just as much as the attack on Pearl Harbor.
This is Jeff Bezo’s personal commentary. He owns the Washington Post lock, stock and stinking barrel.
Avoid Amazon as best you can.
There’s a semantic difference between “the people” and “some people.” Islamic terrorists were responsible for the 9/11 attacks, so “the people” referred to are “the terrorists.” Everyone understood Bush was referring to Islamic terrorists. But when the attackers are called “some people,” this suggests their identities are unknown or that an argument exists concerning who it was who committed the attacks. The word “some” implies vagueness. (As in “How much milk was spilled?” “Some.” Rather than replying “Eight ounces.”)
Rep. Omar asks an interesting question. GWB’s “Global War on Terror” did an enormous amount to advance Islamism. For any other purpose it was pathetically incompetent.
As Rep. Omar asks: “What if he was a Muslim?” Maybe he was.
Jeff Bezos, through his rag the Washington Post, is the modern Joseph Goebbels.