Ilhan Omar says Trump ‘lost his memory’ after he confused him with Rashida Tlaib

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A progressive congresswoman mocked Donald Trump for “losing his memory” after apparently confusing him with another Muslim member of Congress during a visit to his home state on Friday.

Trump and his new running mate JD Vance held their first joint campaign rally of the 2024 season in Minnesota on Saturday, a state the former president lost to Democrats in 2020 and 2016. During Trump’s speech in St. Cloud, he attacked a new perceived enemy. Kamala Harris, endorsed by Joe Biden after the president announced his decision to step aside last Sunday, and also moved to a local target: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a progressive and member of the “Squad” who has been outspoken against Maga Republicanism. .

But in his remarks, Trump mistakenly referred to Omar as a congressman who “gave a speech the first time he walked” and “started screaming”.

“This is a crazy person in the audience,” he said, after giving Omar’s name. “He started screaming…It’s the same crazy person I see every night. He’s tired.”

However, Omar is not the congresswoman who will disrupt one of Trump’s speeches in 2016. That is Rashida Tlaib, a member of Omar’s “Squad” and representative of the neighboring 12th district of Michigan. Tlaib was revealed in 2019 as one of the protesters who disrupted Trump’s speech to the Detroit Economic Club. At the time, he was working as a public interest lawyer.

In a video tweeted by an Australian columnist, Tlaib can be seen by security as the president speaks with a triumphant face. As he approached the man filming with his phone camera, Tlaib yelled, “You’re crazy!” in the crowd, one person called him an “animal” in response.

Omar responded to the video of the former president’s comments in a tweet on Sunday.

“Trump telling dangerous anti-Muslim lies is nothing new. But I never attended his speech. He either lies again or loses his memory,” wrote the Minnesota congresswoman. “Trump needs to step aside because his criminal convictions and ongoing legal problems clearly hurt the 78-year-old victim.”

A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign confirmed that the former president was one of the other members of Congress.

“It’s totally wrong that two crazy, radical people who want to open borders like failed Czar Kamala Harris, are mentally unstable, and promote an anti-American agenda who want to tear the Constitution to pieces so they can burn it like that. They did the American flag, “said Steven Cheung.

Trump has been accused of confusing various political rivals with one another in the past. Most famously, he did it with Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi in January, at the height of the GOP primary, when he blamed the insufficient law enforcement response on January 6. Trump maintained in his public comments that he “deliberately interposed” Haley’s name. for Pelosi in that case, though without clearly explaining why she did it.

The visit to Minnesota on Saturday comes as his campaign tries to steal back some momentum from Harris, whose own bid for the presidency has taken off like a rocket since President Biden announced his decision to step down last Sunday afternoon. In the short time he has been at the top of the Democratic ticket, his campaign says it has raised more than $200m in direct donations and signed up thousands of volunteers.

Trump is coming off a highly successful four-day Republican convention in Milwaukee, where he announced Senator JD Vance as his running mate. In the days that followed, Vance’s past comments about unmarried women and childless Americans have forced the Trump campaign back on the defensive.