On Thursday Rep. Ilhan Omar uttered the fanciful claim that Republicans have begun their “next coup.”
Her remarks came in a statement posted on the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach.
She falsely claimed that former president Donald Trump “planned and executed” the events that transpired that day, in addition to mischaracterizing them as a coup attempt.
“With each passing day, it becomes more and more clear that the outgoing President of the United States planned and executed the coup attempt, refusing a peaceful transition of power, pressuring election officials and his own administration to overturn results, and organizing a rally and march on the seat of government when his other efforts failed,” Omar said.
The representative from Minnesota tried to cite personal experience to justify her claim that Republicans are essentially continuing the work begun on Jan. 6, saying she knows “coup attempts are rarely one-time affairs.”
“Donald Trump’s allies in statehouses across the country are seeking to erect barriers to voting — largely affecting low-income people, people of color, and seniors. If that’s not enough, they are stripping power from nonpartisan election officials and rewriting state laws to seize partisan control over election certification,” she said.
“The next coup is not only possible; it has already begun.”
Omar was not the only Democratic House member to compare the Capitol breach with GOP opposition to her party’s “voting rights” crusade. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did the same thing on Sunday morning.
“What the Republicans are doing across the country is really a legislative continuation of what they did on Jan. 6, which is to undermine our democracy, to undermine the integrity of our elections, to undermine the voting power, which is the essence of a democracy,” she said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”
Republican governors and legislatures in various states have passed bills tightening election laws following the 2020 presidential election. Democrats have gone so far as to wildly mischaracterize these laws as “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Evan Stambaugh
Evan Stambaugh is a freelance writer who had previously been a sports blogger. He has a BA in theology and an MA in philosophy.
