Trump Escalates Criticism of Ilhan Omar While Aboard Air Force One

What began earlier this month as a viral White House quip aimed at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has now evolved into a full-blown campaign flashpoint, with President Donald J. Trump sharpening his criticism of the Somali-born congresswoman and raising broader concerns about Somali refugee resettlement in the United States.

Omar, speaking in October on The Dean Obeidallah Show, dismissed any suggestion that she might lose her citizenship or be deported to Somalia, where she was born.

“I have no worry, I don’t know how they’d take away my citizenship and like deport me,” Omar said. “But I don’t even know why that’s such a scary threat. I’m not the 8-year-old who escaped war anymore. I’m grown, my kids are grown. I could go live wherever I want.”

On Nov. 10, the White House seized on those remarks, posting on X a 2024 photo of President Trump smiling and waving from a McDonald’s drive-thru window — a playful, unmistakably pointed response to a clip of Omar declaring she wasn’t concerned about deportation. The image, taken during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, rocketed across social media and was widely seen as a sarcastic farewell aimed at the congresswoman.

Now the standoff has escalated again. Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One, President Trump invoked a long-running allegation involving Omar’s immigration history.

“She supposedly came into our country by marrying her brother,” he said. “If that’s true, she shouldn’t be a congresswoman, and we should throw her the hell out of the country.”

The president also widened his criticism to address broader concerns about Somali immigration and the financial burden placed on American taxpayers.

“Somalis have caused us a lot of trouble, and they cost us a lot of money,” Trump said. “What the hell are we paying Somalia for? We have Ilhan Omar who does nothing but complain about our Constitution and our country! We’re not taking their people anymore — in fact, we’re sending them back.”

President Trump has repeatedly accused Omar of promoting anti-American rhetoric, including in 2019 when he told her and other members of the progressive “Squad” to “go back” to their “broken and crime-infested countries.” Omar recently returned fire, calling Trump a “lying buffoon” and dismissing his assertion that Somalia’s president refused to take her back.

The White House, however, made clear it will not be softening its stance. According to a senior aide, the president was “reminding voters that America’s generosity should never be repaid with contempt.”

Omar’s family fled Somalia’s civil war in 1991, later spending years in a Kenyan refugee camp before resettling in the United States. She was elected to Congress in 2018, becoming the first Somali-American lawmaker in the U.S. House and one of the chamber’s first Muslim women.

The renewed clash between President Trump and Omar lands at a moment when immigration policy is once again front-and-center — particularly following the deadly attack on two National Guard members over Thanksgiving Eve by an Afghan refugee who arrived under President Joe Biden’s resettlement operations. The confrontation underscores a broader ideological divide: one between Trump’s call for strict vetting, reduced refugee admissions, and renewed national cohesion, and the radical identity-politics framework embraced by Omar and her allies.