Trump campaign manager calls Minnesota Rep Ilhan Omar 'dangerous' and says she is pushing Joe Biden so far to the left that Democrats 'don't recognize what the party has become'
Donald Trump's campaign manager Bill Stepien called Minnesota Rep Ilhan Omar 'the most extreme, most dangerous' member of the Democratic Party as Republicans scramble to win votes in the battleground state.
Stepien made the scathing comment during a media call on Friday, according to Newsweek, marking the latest in a series of attacks against Omar by the president and his team.
'Everywhere else in the state you have common-sense Democrats who don't recognize Joe Biden's Democrat Party anymore,' Stepien said in reference to Minnesota.
'They don't recognize what it's become.'
Stepien also accused Omar of pushing Biden toward the radical left on key issues, saying: 'We know what she wants to do, she wants to defund the police, she is pushing for the Green New Deal.'
Donald Trump's top campaign manager Bill Stepien called Minnesota Rep Ilhan Omar 'the most extreme, most dangerous' member of the Democratic Party during a media call on Friday as Republicans scramble to win back control of the battleground state
His criticisms echoed those made by Trump during his repeated attacks against Omar on the campaign trail in recent weeks, including one at a rally in Florida where the president said the freshman congresswoman 'hates our country' and accused her of entering the US illegally.
Omar was born in Somalia and came to the US as a refugee in the 1990s and became a US citizen at the age of 17 in 2000.
At the Florida rally on October 16, Trump said of Omar: 'She comes from a place that doesn't even have a government and then she comes here, she tells us how to run our country, and she hates our country.
'If you look at the House with Pelosi, it's like they hate Israel, and they believe in Omar who came in here and married her brother or something, and came in illegally.'
Omar's office has said claims that her ex-husband Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is actually her brother who she married in 2009 so he could move to the US, are 'disgusting lies'.
Trump went after Omar again at an October 17 rally in Michigan, saying that she 'truly hates our country' and declaring: 'We're going to win Minnesota because of her.'
Trump has launched repeated attacks against Omar on the campaign trail in recent weeks, including at rallies in Michigan and Florida, where he said the freshman congresswoman 'hates our country' and accused her of entering the US illegally
Omar hit back in an MSNBC interview the next day, saying that she 'loves this country' more than Trump and refuting his unfounded claims that she entered the US illegally.
'It's really also just astonishing to see the way in which he characterizes what love for this country is. I would certainly reckon not only Somalis, but myself, the Governor of Michigan and our Speaker all love this country way more than the president,' Omar said.
She added Trump is 'not only destroying the presidency but everything this country stands for.'
Omar also claimed that attacks by Trump and his team have caused her to receive death threats, saying: 'Every time the president has invoked my name, it has incited violence against me.'
Omar hit back in an MSNBC interview last week, saying that she 'loves this country' more than Trump and refuting his unfounded claims that she entered the US illegally
.@IlhanMN responds to the president's criticism: “I would certainly reckon...not only Somalis, but myself, the governor of Michigan, our speaker, all love this country way more than the president, who is not only destroying the presidency but everything this country stands for.” pic.twitter.com/kcaiClS4K1
— The Week with Joshua Johnson (@TheWeekMSNBC) October 19, 2020
.@IlhanMN responds to the president's criticism: “I would certainly reckon...not only Somalis, but myself, the governor of Michigan, our speaker, all love this country way more than the president, who is not only destroying the presidency but everything this country stands for.” pic.twitter.com/kcaiClS4K1
As Election Day looms, Trump and his campaign have relied increasingly on fear tactics to swing polls in their favor in battleground states like Minnesota.
Though the state's 10 electoral votes have gone to Democratic nominees in the last four elections, Trump did come within one point of winning in 2016 and thus hopes to bring it home this year.
Biden currently holds a six-point lead over Trump in the state, according to a RealClearPolitics analysis of recent polls.
As Stepien did on Friday's campaign call, Trump has repeatedly accused the left of trying to 'destroy the American way of life', 'erase American history' and 'purge American values' - and claimed, with no basis, that Democratic rival Joe Biden would put communities at risk.
Trump is pushing the dark message as he faces headwinds not only in national polling, which shows Biden leading, but also in key battleground surveys.
His comments come after his campaign, with far less cash than Biden's, largely retreated from TV advertising in the Midwest, shifting much of its money to Sun Belt states such as Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia, as well as Pennsylvania.
As he tries to energize his base and keep on-the-fence voters from turning against him, Trump sought to paint Democrats as 'anti-American radicals' and said moderates had 'a moral duty' to join the Republican Party.
'The Democrat Party you once knew doesn't exist,' he said during the aforementioned Michigan rally.
It was the same on issue after issue, as he claimed in hyperbolic terms that Biden's election would spur 'the single biggest depression in the history of our country' and 'turn Michigan into a refugee camp'.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.