Days after conservative Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado was harshly criticized for making anti-Muslim comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat whom she likened to a bomb-carrying terrorist, the two spoke by phone Monday.
By both lawmakers’ accounts, it did not go well.
Boebert sought the conversation after issuing a tepid statement last Friday. Instead, it ended abruptly after Boebert rejected Omar’s request for a public apology. Boebert previously apologized “to anyone in the Muslim community I offended,” but not directly to Omar.
The rhetoric between two of the most polarizing members of the House is just another example of of a GOP lawmaker making a personal attack against another member of Congress, an unsettling trend that has gone largely unchecked by House Republican leaders. It also offers a test of Democrats’ newfound resolve to mete out punishment to Republicans.
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Earlier this month conservative Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona was censured over a violent video. In February Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was booted from congressional committees for her inflammatory rhetoric.
After Monday’s phone call, Omar and Boebert quickly issued statements condemning each other.
“I believe in engaging with those we disagree with respectfully, but not when that disagreement is rooted in outright bigotry and hate,” Omar said in a statement. She said she “decided to end the unproductive call.”
Boebert shot back in an Instagram video: “Rejecting an apology and hanging up on someone is part of cancel culture 101 and a pillar of the Democrat Party.”
The chain of events was set in motion over a week ago when a video posted to Facebook showed Boebert speaking before constituents, describing an interaction with Omar — an interaction that Omar maintains never happened.
In the video, the freshman Colorado lawmaker claims that a Capitol Police officer approached her with “fret on his face” shortly before she stepped aboard a House elevator and the doors closed.
“I look to my left and there she is — Ilhan Omar. And I said, ‘Well, she doesn’t have a backpack. We should be fine,’” Boebert says with a laugh.
Omar is Muslim. Boebert’s comment about Omar not wearing a backpack was an apparent reference to her not carrying a suicide bomb.
Reaction to the video was swift. Omar called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to “take appropriate action” because “normalizing this bigotry not only endangers my life but the lives of all Muslims. Anti-Muslim bigotry has no place in Congress.”
House Democratic leadership also issued a joint statement condemning “Boebert’s repeated, ongoing and targeted Islamophobic comments and actions,” while calling on McCarthy “to finally take real action to confront racism.”
Yet McCarthy, who is in line to become House speaker if Republicans retake the majority next year, has proven reluctant to police members of his caucus whose views are often closely aligned with the party’s base.
Speaking Tuesday to the WCCO Morning News with Adam Carter, fellow Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig and said she never believed Boebert's story.
“The real problem is that my colleague is using anti-Muslim rhetoric and making stories up," Craig said. "If you ever met (Boebert) in Congress, she doesn’t look or speak to anybody. So the minute she told that story I knew it was completely fabricated. This whole movement on the far right to really villainize the Muslim community, to suggest that my colleague is a terrorist or could be, it’s a race to find the bottom of the gutter. The fact that people like Kevin McCarthy and leadership in the GOP don’t strongly condemn what is happening from people like Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, that’s really the saddest part, that the vitriol is such.”
In a tweet Monday afternoon, Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips also condemned the statements from Boebert, saying, "A Congress populated by anti-immigrant Islamophobes is a stain on America and compromises our national security. An authentic apology is due Rep. Omar and our nation."
It’s not Boebert’s first brush with controversy. It is also not the first time Omar has run into controversy.
Since Boebert’s election to Congress in 2020, she has leaned in to provocative broadsides that delight the party’s base. Omar has drawn her focus in particular. She has previously called Omar and others “full time propagandists” for “state sponsored terrorism,” and “politicians with suicide belts strapped their body.”
In May, she tweeted that Omar was “a full-time propagandist for Hamas.” She has also called Omar and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib “evil” while also referring to them as the “jihad squad.” Tlaib, like Omar, is Muslim.
Omar is a second-term Democrat and refugee from Somalia representing Minnesota’s fifth district. She was one of the first two Muslim women elected to serve in Congress. In her time in Congress she has drawn scrutiny for her comments as well, often in reference to Israel, some of which have been blasted as anti-Semitic.
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In 2019, she suggested that Israel’s supporters are pushing U.S. lawmakers to take a pledge of “allegiance to a foreign country.” She was also pressured to apologized “unequivocally” for suggesting that congressional support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins baby,” a longstanding trope about Jews buying influence.
House Democratic leadership directly rebuked Omar over the remarks.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.