Rep. Ilhan Omar would not take being thrown off the Foreign Affairs committee meekly. She gave a defiant speech where she made the MAGA Republicans and their meek appeasers seem weak and impotent.
Ilhan Omar asserted herself with this speech.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar did not pull any punches with her fiery floor speech before the vote to remove her from the Foreign Affairs committee.
“There is this idea that you are suspect if you are an immigrant,” Omar said. “Or if you are from certain parts of the world, or a certain skin tone, or a Muslim.”
The Congresswoman then pointed out that President Barack Obama suffered the same type of indignities from Republicans when he was elected president of the United States.
The premise for Ilhan Omar’s removal from the committee is for anti-semitic tropes she used that she apologized for many times over. The reality is this is payback for the MAGA Republicans who threatened the lives of other Congresspersons, removal during the last cycle. There was no comparison, but that does not matter to them.
“I am Muslim,” Omar said. “I am an immigrant and, interestingly, from Africa. Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted? Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy? Or that they see me as a powerful voice that needs to be silenced. Frankly, it is expected. Because when you push power, power pushes back.”
Omar said that expanding our ideas to live up not to the myth but to the ideals of who we say we are is essential. And to do that, representation matters.
“I am an American,” Omar said proudly. “An American who was sent here by her constituents to represent them in Congress. A refugee who survived the horrors of a civil war. Someone who spent her childhood in a refugee camp. Someone who knows what it means to have a shot at a better life here in the United States. And someone who believes in the American Dream, and the American possibility, and the promise and the ability to participate in the Democratic process.”
She said she would continue to speak up. After all, she is respected all around America and the world.
