After some banter with Tharwat, she continued, “You don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with an intensity, you know, you don’t say ‘the army’ with an intensity. But you say these names because you want that word to carry weight.
She concluded: “So yes, a lot of it is deluded, I think. When you hear a lot of people speaking in Arabic, you know, suspicion arises.”
It is possible to argue that Omar was making light of al Qaeda’s crimes in suggesting that its name itself is what makes people recoil, or that she was implying that there is an equivalence between al Qaeda and the US army. But accusing her of praising al Qaeda is simply inaccurate.
Daniel Dale and Sarah Westwood, “Fact check: Trump falsely accuses Ilhan Omar of praising al Qaeda“, CNN, July 15, 2019
At least CNN suggested that there may be something to Trump’s claim that Omar praised al Qaeda. That is more than most defenders of Omar can bring themselves to do.
