Ilhan Omar: progressive Democrats condemn Republican smears and urge party to do the same

Trump escalates attacks on Muslim American congresswoman’s patriotism, prompting 2020 frontrunners to defend her

Guardian staff and agencies
Sat 13 Apr 2019 02.45 BST Last modified on Sat 13 Apr 2019 03.02 BST

Progressive Democrats fiercely condemned Donald Trump and other Republicans’ growing efforts to smear the US representative Ilhan Omar, and urged party leaders to do the same.

The president’s attacks labeling Omar, one of the two Muslim women serving in Congress, as unpatriotic are “dangerous” and “inciting violence”, a handful of prominent Democrats said on Friday. Just last week, a Trump supporter in upstate New York was charged with threatening to kill Omar.

Two of the most progressive Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination called on the party to condemn the attacks.

Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the frontrunners for the Democratic nomination, called the attacks on Omar “disgusting and dangerous” and said that Omar would not “back down to Trump’s racism and hate, and neither will we”.

“The President is inciting violence against a sitting Congresswoman – and an entire group of Americans based on their religion,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, another 2020 candidate, wrote on Twitter. “It’s disgusting. It’s shameful. And any elected leader who refuses to condemn it shares responsibility for it.”

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