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In a White House cabinet meeting on Wednesday, President Donald Trump used racist language to deride Somali people in Minnesota, blanketly describing the entire community as criminals.
“They’re all crooks, the Somalians,” Trump said. “What they’ve done to Minnesota, the Somalians, they’re crooked as hell.”
Trump then targeted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), saying, “They’re all crooks. Ilhan Omar. They’re all crooks.”
Trump further asserted that his administration had “got them,” and that they’re “putting the clamps” on Somalis who he claims are committing widespread fraud through federal safety net programs. These claims are largely based on debunked “reporting” from right-wing influencers.
Trump frequently pushes baseless or exaggerated claims of fraud to justify slashing funds for public services, particularly in Democratic-run states, such as Minnesota. But despite his supposed crusade against fraud, Trump has pardoned dozens of individuals convicted of financial crimes and public corruption, including granting clemency last year to an individual who was found guilty of pilfering over $200 million in funds from Medicare.
Omar has faced relentless bigotry from the Trump administration, with officials spreading Islamophobic conspiracy theories about her and calling for her deportation — rhetoric that has incited death threats and even stoked violence against her. Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance claimed that the Department of Justice was investigating the Minnesota Democrat, implying that the inquiry dealt with claims that she had lied on her immigration paperwork and family finances. Vance also implied — as Trump has done in the past — that officials were probing bogus assertions that she had married her brother in order to gain citizenship.
“You read the things about Ilhan Omar and about you know who she married and whether she didn’t marry this person or that person. It certainly seems like something fishy is there,” Vance said at the time.
In fact, such claims have been thoroughly debunked multiple times over.
Trump has a long history of peddling racist rhetoric, including in recent months.
In December, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was targeting Somali people in Minneapolis, Trump called the community “garbage,” and said Somalis “contribute nothing” to society.
In February, Trump shared to his Truth Social account an animated video that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes — a centuries-old racist trope leveled against Black people.
In April, Truthout conducted an analysis of Trump’s Truth Social posts describing people as “low IQ,” a phrase critics have described as a racist dog whistle. That analysis found that since starting his second term, 84 percent of Trump’s posts using the phrase were referring to people of color.
And last month, Trump shared a transcript from right-wing podcaster Michael Savage, in which the host described nonwhite immigrants coming to the U.S. (and their children) as being from “hellhole” countries. Savage also claimed in the transcript that those children, now U.S. citizens, were more loyal to their parents’ countries than to the U.S., another racist trope.
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