Explicating Ilhan Omar [With Comment by John]

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s exchange with Special Envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams yesterday consumed less than five minutes, yet it warrants close scrutiny (C-SPAN video below). As a newly installed member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee doing her thing, we see the devolution of the Democratic Party.

Omar begins by calling Abrams “Mr. Adams.” She pretends to deep knowledge about him, launching an ad hominem attack on Abrams for wrongdoing dating back to the Iran-Contra affair during the Cold War, yet she can’t pronounce “Contra” in the question written for her by some Communist staff member. She then refused to let Abrams respond to the personal attack on him. “That was not a question,” she says. “Thank you for your participation.” This is all in the first 73 seconds.

When Abrams answers “no” to Omar’s absurd question about a 40-year old massacre in El Salvador, Omar responds, “I’ll take that as a yes.” It’s an upside down world.

Monica Showalter explicates the full exchange in a useful American Thinker post here. After the El Salvadoran detour, Monica points out, Omar “slid into Russian propaganda talking points, warning that Venezuela’s democrats were going to stage massacres and she wanted to know if he’d be happy about those. Seriously, that’s straight from Russian propaganda talking points, derived from its Ukraine war…”

Monica observes: “[A]fter all that ignorant crap about El Salvador, blaming the U.S. for some decades-old civil war crime it had nothing to do with, [Omar] finally get[s] to her issue about Venezuela: The horrible danger from … Venezuela’s opposition. Never mind the starvation, never mind the people fleeing, never mind the ruined institutions, never mind the dining out on zoo animals. In Omar’s addled mind, the big risk in that country is … Venezuela’s democrats.”

Monica quotes Ron Radosh’s conclusion: Omar obviously believes “that the United States is an imperialist and reactionary nation that by its very nature abuses human rights…” It’s not just the Jewish people whom Omar hates. She’s not too fond of the United States either.

Let’s go to the video. This is worth your time.

JOHN adds: Omar’s line on Venezuela may mirror Russian talking points, but I think the more salient fact is that it also is Iran’s line. Iran’s mullahs are close allies of the Chavez/Maduro regime and Iran, like Russia and China, has refused to recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president and has denounced him as a “right wing extremist.” I think Omar is most likely taking her marching orders from Iran’s mullahs.

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