President Donald Trump finished a press conference on Tuesday with an angry rant against Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), as well as the Somali community in general.
The tirade began as a complaint against Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), who was on the opposing presidential ticket as former Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate in last year's election. The Minneapolis-St. Paul area, which Omar represents, has one of America's largest Somali diasporas.
"There's something wrong with him," said Trump. "And you look at what he's done with Somalia, where Somalia, which is barely a country — they have no anything, they just run around killing each other. There's no structure. And when I see somebody like Ilhan Omar, who I don't know at all, but I always watch her, for years I've watched her complain about our Constitution, how she's been treated badly, the Constitution, the United States of America is a bad place, hates everybody, hates Jewish people, hates everybody. I think she's an incompetent person. She's a real terrible person."
"But when I watch what is happening in Minnesota, the Land of a Thousand Lakes, or however many lakes they have — they got a lot of lakes," Trump continued. "But this beautiful place, and I see these people ripping it off, and now I'm understanding, and you're going to look into this, I hear they ripped off, Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars. Billions. Every year. Billions of dollars, and they contribute nothing."
Trump is likely referring to a newly emerging federal case alleging a handful of individuals in Minnesota, including some in the Somali community, set up fake companies that embezzled billions in pandemic relief money.
During his Tuesday tirade, Trump issued a grim warning that America is at a "tipping point" — and could go "one way or the other."
"We're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country," he warned. "Ilhan Omar is garbage. She's garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren't people that work. These aren't people that say, 'Come on, let's make this place great.' These are people who do nothing but complain. They complain. And from where they came from, they got nothing."
He concluded: "When they come from hell, and they complain and do nothing but b----b----. We don't want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it."
In recent months, Trump has repeatedly clashed with Omar, one of the first Muslim women ever elected to Congress. Last month, he accused her of not understanding the Constitution, to which she replied, "Unlike you, I can read." He has also said he is working on deporting Omar back to Somalia, from which she fled as a child refugee decades ago. She responded by calling him a "lying buffoon."