President Donald Trump blasted Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar when questioned about the attack she suffered during a town hall event in Minneapolis on Tuesday night.
Omar was criticizing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the immigration enforcement operations in her district when a man in the audience rushed toward her while yelling and spraying an unidentified strong-smelling liquid in a syringe.
The man, who has since been identified as 55-year-old Anthony Kazmierczak, was arrested and has since been charged with third-degree assault.
Asked by an ABC reporter whether he had seen the footage, which shows Omar being sprayed with the mystery liquid by her assailant, Trump suggested that the incident was a plot concocted by Omar herself.
“No. I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud. I really don’t think about that. She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.”
After the reporter asked a second time whether he had seen the footage, the president replied, “I haven’t seen it. No, no. I hope I don’t have to bother.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and Omar’s office for comment.
When asked if she was OK by a CNN reporter who was at the town hall event, Omar said, “You know, I‘m going to go figure if I am, but I feel OK. I feel that it is important for people, whether they are in elected office or not, not to allow these people to intimidate us, to make us not fight for our constituents and for the country we love.”
She also assured her constituents that she was OK in a social media post, writing on X, “I’m ok. I’m a survivor so this small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work. I don’t let bullies win. Grateful to my incredible constituents who rallied behind me. Minnesota strong.”
Omar has been a frequent target of the president’s attacks, particularly as the Department of Homeland Security continues to target her district for increased ICE operations that have resulted in the deaths of two people at the hands of federal immigration officers.
Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mom-of-three, was killed in Minneapolis by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7. Just over two weeks later, 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents.
Trump has regularly mocked and insulted Omar in his public statements and social media posts, and had insulted her hours prior to the attack during his speech in Iowa on Tuesday afternoon.
“She comes from a country that’s a disaster,” Trump said; Omar was born in Somalia and moved to the U.S. as a teenager. “It’s probably... it’s not even a country,” he continued. “It barely has a government. They’re good at one thing: pirates.”
“But they don’t do that anymore because they get the same treatment from us as the drug dealers get,” he added, referring to his administration’s lethal strikes on boats suspected of transporting drugs, before imitating the sound of an aerial strike, “Boom! Boom! Boom!”
After being attacked, Omar resumed her speech, telling constituents present, “We will continue! These f---ing a------s are not gonna get away with this!”
“Here is the reality people like this ugly man don’t understand—we are Minnesota Strong. We’ll stay resilient in the face of whatever they might throw at us.”
