President Donald Trump is lashing out again at U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit.
On Wednesday, Feb. 25, the Republican president posted on his Truth Social site, saying Tlaib and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., “screamed uncontrollably” during his State of the Union speech and “had the bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people.” In the message, he called them “lunatics” and said they “look like they should be institutionalized.”
From video of the event, the two did clearly take issue with some of the president’s statements. A clip on CNBC’s YouTube feed from the speech shows Omar, yelling what appears to be the words, “You have killed Americans,” at Trump, and, a short time later, Tlaib shouting at the president as well, though it’s difficult to tell what she said.
Jake Sherman, a reporter and founder of Punchbowl News, a site that covers Washington, posted on social media platform X during the speech that Tlaib also was “screaming at Trump that he was killing American citizens” and that his Justice Department release all the files associated with wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It was unclear whether those comments came at the same time as the CNBC clip, however.
The clip came shortly after Trump asked members of Congress appearing at the joint session to stand up if they agreed with the statement, “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Many, if not most, Democrats remained seated while Republicans stood. Trump said, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Tlaib and Omar, who were the first two Muslim American women elected to Congress, both entered the House in 2019 and have been sharp critics of the Trump administration, its crackdown on immigrants and its stepped-up efforts to detain and deport individuals it deems are in the United States illegally.
While there are diverse views of immigration policies among Democrats, many in the party have argued that it is reductive and violative of the nation’s traditions to label immigrants in the country without documentation as illegal aliens or criminals and that the Trump administration and Republicans have engaged in stereotyping immigrants fleeing hardship in other countries as dangerous.
In his Truth Social post, Trump called both women “low IQ” and suggested the United States “should send them back from where they came,” though Tlaib, a Palestinian American, was born in Detroit. Omar was born in Somalia and immigrated to the United States as a child.
Responding to Trump’s post on her personal account on X, Tlaib wrote that he “Can’t take two Muslimas talking back and correcting him so now he is crashing out. #PresidentMajnoon.”
“Majnoon” (or majnun) means crazy or insane in Arabic.
In 2019 during his first term as president, Trump commented that Tlaib and Omar, along with Democratic U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, and Ayanna Pressley, of Massachusetts, should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” Other than Omar, the other three were born in the United States.
This story was updated to add new information.
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on X @tsspangler.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump criticizes Tlaib, Omar as ‘lunatics’ after State of the Union
Reporting by Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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