Ilhan Omar ‘confident’ Lauren Boebert will pay a price for Islamophobic remarks
Confident that congressional leadership will do the right thing, Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar said on Sunday she believes a fellow House member will be punished for making Islamophobic comments.
The Minnesota pol told CNN’s “State of the Union” that she has spoken with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and that the California Democratic leader would deal with Rep. Lauren Boebert and her remarks about Omar, a member of the House leftist “squad.”
“When I first got to Congress, I was worried that I wasn’t going to be allowed to be sworn in because there was a ban on the hijab,” Omar said. “[Pelosi] promised me she would take care of it. She fulfilled that promise.
“She’s made another promise to me she will take care of this, and I believe her,” she said. “I’m very confident that she will take decisive action next week.”
Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California already took a pass on disciplining Boebert, a Colorado Republican, for describing an elevator encounter with Omar as a “jihad squad moment.”
“I said, ‘Well, she doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine,’” Boebert said, suggesting Omar was a terrorist, in a video posted on Facebook last month.
Omar heaped scorn on McCarthy, who also declined to punish Rep. Paul Gosar for an outrageous video edited to depict violence against Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and President Biden.
Pelosi moved to have the House censure Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, instead.
“McCarthy is a liar and a coward,” Omar said. “We have to push them to reckon with the fact that their party right now is normalizing anti-Muslim bigotry.”
