Ilhan Omar Reacts to Trump Rebuke During Affordability Rally

Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar said Donald Trump had an “obsession” with her that “is beyond weird” after the president prompted supporters at a rally on Tuesday to revive the 2019 “send her back” chant.

Trump used a Pennsylvania rally on Tuesday, billed as an “Affordability” event aimed at voters concerned about rising prices, to unleash a series of inflammatory remarks about immigrants and the representative from Minnesota.

He folded affordability issues into a broader immigration pitch, mocking Omar, repeating false claims about her citizenship and openly embracing his previously denied remark about “s***hole countries.”

Why It Matters
President Trump, who has consistently deployed border control and mass deportation promises as the central, unifying pillar of his political brand, has used immigration—often successfully—to frame his opponents as weak and to mobilize his core supporters around a promise of radical enforcement and national closure.

Immigration remains one of the most volatile and defining political issues in the United States, driven by a convergence of economic anxieties, concerns over border security and the rule of law, and underlying cultural identity debates.

Omar, the first Somali American elected to Congress, continues to be a favorite target of Trump, who earlier this month took aim at the Somali community in Minnesota.

What To Know
During the rally on Tuesday, Trump mocked Omar by saying: “Ilhan Omar, whatever the hell her name is. With her little turban. I love her. She comes in, does nothing but b****…we ought to get her the hell out…she’s here illegally.” The crowd then broke into chants of “send her back!”—a reprise of the chant that erupted at his Greenville, North Carolina, rally in 2019.

Omar responded in a post on X: “Trump’s obsession with me is beyond weird. He needs serious help. Since he has no economic policies to tout, he’s resorting to regurgitating bigoted lies instead. He continues to be a national embarrassment.”

Representative Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1982. Her family fled the Somali Civil War when she was 8 years old, and they spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before being granted asylum and arriving in the United States in 1995. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen at the age of 17 in 2000—as a U.S. citizen and a member of Congress, Representative Omar cannot be deported under U.S. law.

U.S. citizens are not subject to the civil immigration enforcement authority of agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but calls for Omar’s denaturalization and deportation have been a recurring theme among certain conservative political figures, often linked to unsubstantiated allegations of marriage or immigration fraud, which she has dismissed.

During the speech, Trump also recounted —approvingly — his 2018 Oval Office remark in which he referred to Haiti and African nations as “s***hole countries,” a comment he previously denied making.

Trump revived the line after a rallygoer shouted it out, leading him to say: “We had a meeting and I said, ‘Why is it we only take people from s***hole countries… Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden?’”

He then said Somalia was “filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime,” while adding that he had last week “announced a permanent pause on Third World migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries.”

During a December 2 Cabinet meeting, Trump had said of the Somali community. “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country. We can go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”

“Somalians should be out of here,” he told reporters at a White House event the following day. “They’ve destroyed our country.”

On Tuesday, he also told supporters that “25 million people came into our country, totally unchecked and unvetted,” tying illegal immigration to inflation–an argument he has made repeatedly. Trump also praised North Korea’s frontier as “one of the strongest borders anywhere in the world,” describing a barrier of “seven walls of wire.”

What People Are Saying

President Trump’s full remarks about Omar at the Pennsylvania rally: “Ilhan Omar, whatever the hell her name is. With her little turban. I love her. She comes in, does nothing but b****, she’s always complaining. She comes from a country, it’s considered about the worst country in the world. They have no military, they have no nothing, they have no parliament. They don’t know what the hell parliament means. They have nothing, they have no police, they police themselves, they kill each other all the time. She comes to our country, and she’s always complaining, “the constitution allows me to do this.” We ought to get her the hell out. She married her brother in order to get in. She married her brother. Can you imagine if Donald Trump married his sister?–she’s a beautiful person–if I married my sister to get my citizenship, do you think I would last for two hours, or would it be something less than that? She married her brother to get in, therefore she’s here illegally.”

Following Trump’s remarks on December 2, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders wrote on X: “When demagogues like Trump are in trouble, they reach for the same playbook: racism, hatred and division, this time against Rep. Ilhan Omar and the Somali-American community. It’s disgusting. It’s un-American. And it won’t work.”

What Happens Next
Trump’s renewed rhetoric on Omar, immigration and “s***hole countries” is likely to intensify scrutiny of his campaign message as he seeks to tie affordability concerns to border and demographic issues.

With Omar again accusing him of relying on “bigoted lies” rather than offering policy answers on affordability and the cost of living, the Pennsylvania rally may shape both parties’ next moves.