Video of Rep. Ilhan Omar Allegedly Saying Americans Should Be ‘Fearful of White Men’ is Misleadingly Edited

A 2018 video of Rep. Ilhan Omar has been floating around Twitter this week and fueling outrage from conservatives thanks to a quote from the Minnesota Democrat, who at one point said “our country should be more fearful of white men.”

Sen. Marco Rubio pounced on the comments from Omar, asking whether the media would hound every Democrat to denounce the statement as racist, as with President Donald Trump’s “go back” tweets.

However the clip, selectively edited, is missing serious context.

The video’s recirculation seemed to begin with Daily Signal writer Molly Prince, who posted this extremely misleading and selectively edited video that removed key context.

Ilhan Omar contends that Americans “should be more fearful of white men.” pic.twitter.com/ot7PBF96P1

— Molly Prince (@mollyfprince) July 24, 2019

In the interview, Al Jazeera host Mehdi Hasan asked Omar what she would say to conservatives who argue that the rise of Islamophobia in the United States is borne out of a legitimate fear of “quote unquote jihadist terrorism.”

Here’s Omar’s response, in full:

“I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within our country. So if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe, Americans safe inside of this country we should be profiling, monitoring, creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.”

You can watch the full clip above.

Omar does not seem to have said fear of anyone should be a driving force in policy. Her argument is that if America is going to make policies based on fear of a certain demographic, white men should look inward.

Reason’s Robby Soave originally tweeted outrage of “our country should be more fearful of white men” on its own, then deleted the tweet when the context made it seem more like calling out hypocrisy.

Deleted this tweet. The video is misleadingly edited, and longer video makes it clear she was criticizing hypocrisy, not calling for surveillance of white people. I’ll write about this later. pic.twitter.com/djA7QSfjX8

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) July 25, 2019

“We are moving away from the idea that we are supposed to be a welcoming nation,”  said Omar in response to the rise in anti-Muslim, far-right extremist groups.

Hasan said that most of the funding and attention in fighting terror groups, even under Obama, went to Muslim communities. “Over the past few years more than 20 young Somali Americans have left to go and fight for ISIL or Al Shabaab or one of these “jihadist groups” abroad, that’s a real threat obviously no one is pretending its not a threat, so what do you do about it?”

Omar blamed marginalizing rhetoric of American leaders. “Where we actually find a solution is looking at our foreign policy looking at how we are engaging with the members of these communities, and the kind of rhetoric that is being spewed out of leaders.”

“Some would say that’s true theres some really bad rhetoric from our politicians, but there’s also a lot of bad rhetoric coming from Muslim community leaders, is that fair?” Mehdi pushed back.

“Both of those statements could be true and I think it just goes to show what happens when you have segments within communities that are using fear and hate to mobilize their base and it is important for us to have that conversation about what kind of communities we are trying to build.”