Can't Make It Up: Ilhan Omar Says TSA Workers Should Be Paid, Then Moves To Defund Them Entirely
While there have long been politicians on both sides of the aisle who have said dumb or disingenuous things, there is a new Democratic member of Congress who seems intent on claiming the title for being the absolute worst in that regard.
Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, when she isn’t tweeting anti-Semitic jabs at Jewish people or the nation of Israel, is launching poorly thought out attacks on President Donald Trump and his administration.
The latest example came on Feb. 8, when within the space of one hour Omar used Twitter to decry the fact that some Transportation Security Administration employees had yet to receive their back pay from the partial government shutdown, then proceeded to suggest the entire governmental department within which the TSA is contained be defunded, apparently in order to spite Trump.
The glaring disparity in those two tweets did not go unnoticed, and Fox News early morning host Rob Schmitt combined the two tweets into one to highlight the contradictory comments.
Ilhan Omar angry and complaining TSA agents haven’t received back pay, then an hour later calls to defund DHS… which would end TSA pic.twitter.com/OaDTqV3Cbi
— Rob Schmitt (@SchmittNYC) February 9, 2019
“Ilhan Omar angry and complaining TSA agents haven’t received back pay, then an hour later calls to defund DHS .. which would end TSA,” Schmitt tweeted.
Omar’s first tweet declared, “This is an outrage. I’m hearing from TSA workers back in Minnesota who STILL haven’t received backpay after the shutdown. All workers affected by the shutdown — including contractors — deserve backpay!”
But that tweet, demanding compensation for TSA workers who’d been furloughed or forced to work without pay, was followed 79 minutes later by a tweet that declared “#Not1Dollar” for the Department of Homeland Security, of which the TSA is a part.
The follow-up tweet also referred to the president as “Individual 1,” which stems from the indictment of Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen and was apparently meant to insinuate that he was some sort of criminal co-conspirator.
Omar’s second tweet read, “When Democrats stood our ground last month, we proved that Individual 1 does not have the public support to ram his hateful wall through Congress. Let’s stand firm: #Not1Dollar for DHS.”
Following the justifiable pushback she received over that massive contradiction, Omar attempted to backtrack and explain that she had said something to the effect of “not one dollar more” for DHS, but as can clearly be seen in the above tweet, that isn’t what she said.
Instead, Omar implied through “not one dollar” that the entire department should be defunded.
Playing along for a moment and following the suggestion to defund DHS to its natural conclusion, The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra listed all of the governmental agencies that are funded through DHS and noted in a tweet, “Omar is calling for the destruction of agencies that keep America safe.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) calls for the complete defunding of DHS, which includes:
-ICE
-CBP
-TSA
-Secret Service
-FEMA
-USCIS
-Coast Guard
-Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
-Etc…Omar is calling for the destruction of agencies that keep America safe https://t.co/eM3FWqAJId
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) February 9, 2019
Those agencies include: the U.S. Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, Customs and Immigration Services, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Secret Service and the TSA.
People like Omar demand that they be taken seriously by the American people, but then proceed to say incredibly un-serious things like this.
Omar is either ill-informed about the structure of the federal government and how the appropriations process works, or she is being disingenuous to demagogue the situation for partisan purposes.
There really aren’t any other options to explain Omar’s dueling tweets, and neither explanation is a particularly good look for a sitting member of Congress.
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