Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) rushed to the defense on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) on Friday, suggesting that President Donald Trump calling out Omar represented “dangerous incitement.”
“Members of Congress have a duty to respond to the President’s explicit attack today.@IlhanMN’s life is in danger,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “For our colleagues to be silent is to be complicit in the outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress. We must speak out.”
Ocasio-Cortez added: “‘First they came…'”
The quote, “First they came…” comes from a quote of prominent Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller, who described how people’s inaction toward Adolf Hitler led to the Holocaust. The famous quote is featured at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which Ocasio-Cortez included a picture of in her tweet.
Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet came in response to Trump tweeting out a video on Friday afternoon that showed Omar describing the 9/11 terror attacks as “some people did something,” and also included the tragic images from the attacks of that day.
“WE WILL NEVER FORGET!” Trump tweeted with the video.
Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet elicited a strong reaction online from many across the political spectrum.
Imam Mohamad Tawhidi tweeted: “Here are the two facts that you missed: 1. The President expressing himself saying that he will ‘never forget’ the victims of 9/11 is not an ‘attack’, it’s exactly what’s expected from him. 2. Her life is not in danger. In fact, her association with CAIR puts the U.S in danger.”
David Harsanyi tweeted: “This is just a shameful attempt to chill speech. It belittles both the real victims of 9/11 and the Holocaust.”
Jim Hanson tweeted: “He called her out for her atrocious 9/11 comment Is she somehow immune from criticism? How many massively more inflammatory things have you & your crew said about @realDonaldTrump ? And a Holocaust reference puts you in the same (low) class as #IlhanOmar”
Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro tweeted: “That many in the media will parrot this ‘speech is violence’ codswallop is a demonstration how little they care about protecting speech when the speech is criticism of the Left. And there’s something deeply disturbing about AOC making Holocaust references to defend an open and unrepentant anti-Semite who is merely being criticized”
Popular conservative Twitter account AG Conservative tweeted: “Unbelievable. She is comparing Trump posting a video quoting Omar’s own words to the Holocaust. Despicable and incredibly offensive, especially to those of us whose families were actually impacted by those words.”