A war of words between two congresswomen has continued on almost two weeks after it began.
Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado have been publicly feuding since Nov. 17, when Boebert verbally thrashed Omar on the House floor as a “jihad squad member” who paid her husband — “not her brother-husband, the other one” — over $1 million in campaign funds.
Then on Nov. 20, video from a private event emerged in which Boebert implied that a Capitol police officer mistook Omar for a terrorist. Both sets of remarks caused Omar to fire back on separate occasions, calling Boebert an “insurrectionist” and then a “buffoon” who made the story up.
On Monday, Boebert made good on her promise to speak with Omar “directly” about her remarks after apologizing for offending “anyone in the Muslim community.”
But it appears their conversation didn’t go very well, as Boebert explained in a video posted to Instagram on Monday.
“As a strong Christian woman who values faith deeply, I never want anything I say to offend someone’s religion. So I told her that. Even after I put out a public statement to that effect, she said that she still wanted a public apology because what I had done wasn’t good enough. So I reiterated to her what I had just said,” Boebert commented.
“She kept asking for a public apology, so I told Ilhan Omar that she should make a public apology to the American people for her anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-police rhetoric. She continued to press, and I continued to press back. And then Representative Omar hung up on me.”
Boebert decried Omar’s abrupt hang-up as “cancel culture 101,” but Omar said in a statement that she refuses to engage with people who allegedly ground their disagreements in “outright bigotry and hate.”
“Instead of apologizing for her Islamophobic comments and fabricated lies, Rep. Boebert refused to publicly acknowledge her hurtful and dangerous comments. She instead doubled down on her rhetoric and I decided to end the unproductive call,” Omar wrote.
She also called on House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy to “hold his party accountable” for “repeated instances of anti-Muslim hate and harassment” and accused the GOP itself of “mainstreaming bigotry and hatred.”
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.
