Today, in an interview with Fox News, Vice President Pence called on the Democratic House leadership to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“Ilhan Omar has made statements, anti-Semitic comments against our most cherished ally, Israel, that ought to be rejected by every American,” Pence said in the interview. “And frankly the fact that very recently, she’s been trying to blame the United States of America for the deprivation and the poverty brought on by the dictatorship in Venezuela tells me … Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has no place on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Democratic leadership ought to remove her.”
This is not the first time Pence has called out Omar for her despicable views. “Anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress, much less the Foreign Affairs Committee,” Pence said of freshman congresswoman back in February. Democratic leaders have yet to hold her accountable for her anti-Semitism, and it’s unlikely they will now. Omar did offer a rather insincere apology for her statements, but hopes that the controversy surrounding her would fade away were lost when she managed to put her anti-Semitic foot in her mouth again, Rather than hold Omar accountable, Nancy Pelosi actually defended Omar’s anti-Semitism, claiming Omar “has a different experience in the use of words.”
The Democratic Party has a growing problem of tolerating anti-Semitism amongst its ranks, and failure to address it has allowed it to become mainstream in their party. Mike Pence’s renewed call for Omar’s removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee makes it even less likely that Democrats will do the right thing. Back in March, I explained how Barack Obama brought anti-Semitism into the mainstream of the Democratic Party by surrounding himself with anti-Semites, and repeatedly siding against our ally Israel in favor of Palestine and radical Islamic groups like Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, amongst other things. Democrats may have missed their opportunity to punish Omar, but in reality, they missed their opportunity to condemn anti-Semitism for eight years by turning a blind eye to what was going on in the Obama administration.
Even if the Democrats did remove Omar, it would be over a public relations concern, not a genuine desire to oust the anti-Semites from their party.
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Matt Margolis is the author of The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama and the bestselling The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. His new book, Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy, will be published in July 2019. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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