Trump’s Racist Persecution Of Ilhan Omar Is a Warning That Saudi Arabia And All Persian Gulf Nations Can’t Ignore.
This story is a dire warning to Muslim nations, particularly those engaged in the Persian Gulf war that Donald Trump started. Donald Trump and his white supremacist backers are anti-Muslim haters.
If you don’t think Trump is laughing about Persian Gulf nations waging war against each other, then look at the proof. Trump’s is obsessed with belittling, harassing, and attacking Muslim US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. She was born in Somalia in 1982 and emigrated to the US in 1995. Ilhan’s name in Arabic means “inspiration,” and she is that.
Figure 1: Trump Comments about Ilhan Omar made at his recent rallies
One of Donald Trump’s trademark political strategies is that he verbally abuses Ilhan Omar at his rallies for racist entertainment purposes. At one rally, he referred to Omar as “garbage,” which was met with cheers from his white nationalist Christian base. Omar’s status as a black, female immigrant, and a Muslim makes her Trump’s perfect propaganda target. She is everything that Trump and his supporters hate and fear. Omar is strong and determined, like a fish that swam 100 miles upriver to succeed. Despite coming from Somalia, which Trump described as a “shithole country,” Omar has overcome adversity and is a member of the US Congress. How many of Trump’s supporters could do what Omar has done?
In an effort that was intended to intimidate and instill fear in the Minneapolis voters who elected Omar, Trump ordered 4,000 masked and armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Minneapolis in a Gestapo-like crackdown. Minneapolis has more than 100,000 Muslim Somali immigrants, and they were the primary target of Trump’s ICE raids.
Get John Sullivan’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Trump sent ICE to Minneapolis for a single reason. He felt threatened and wanted to show that he and his white supremacist backers are more powerful than Omar and her supporters. Trump’s actions were driven by fear of the inspiration that Omar represents to all immigrants. In the 2025 Minneapolis election, Omar humiliated her Trump-backed Republican challenger by a margin of 265,000 to 86,000 votes.
As the US elections draw near (November 3), Trump is again using Omar for his trademark white nationalist propaganda. In a sickening racist attack against Omar that was motivated by her black, Muslim, immigrant heritage, Trump ordered 25 ICE agents to raid her home at 6 am. The basis for the October 12th raid is vaporous allegations made in the media that Omar committed immigration fraud. The search warrant, supporting affidavits, and list of seized items during the raid have not been made public. The lack of transparency and questionable Unconstitutionality regarding ICE’s raid on Omar’s home raises the possibility that it was a Trump-orchestrated anti-Muslim hate crime.
Trump’s use of Omar to make sensationalized anti-immigrant headlines is almost identical to fabricated propaganda he spewed about Obama having a fake US birth certificate. In Trump’s mind, truth doesn’t matter; only whether his supporters will believe it. For example, in Ohio, Trump fabricated a news story about Haitian immigrants abducting and eating people’s pets. Despite knowing that the story was untrue, Trump used it frequently on the campaign trail to slander black immigrants because it matched the preconceived stereotypes that his racist supporters identified with.
Since the raid on Ilhan Omar’s house, Trump has been on TV almost every day using unproven assertions to demonize the Minneapolis Congresswoman. Below is a pattern of comments Trump has recently made maligning Omar. The comments provide a troubling insight into Trump’s personal psyche and how he views Muslims, the world, and equality. Trump's comments have far-reaching international policy implications that are directly relevant to the ongoing Persian Gulf war.
If you have gotten this far, thank you for your interest and for taking the time to think about it. Why I think this story is possibly one of the most important that I have written is that, in many ways, Ilhan Omar is a proxy for how Trump sees all Muslims. The war Trump launched against Iran in February has morphed into a dogfight where no less than six Muslim countries are fighting against each other. To an anti-Muslim white nationalist like Trump, there is no better possible outcome than setting the entire Muslim world ablaze.
There may be a light at the end of the tunnel. The good news is that representatives from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan are meeting in Tehran today. They are discussing ending the ongoing war that Ilhan Omar’s psycho stalker, Donald Trump, started. The non-invitation of US officials to the peace talks hopefully means that the Persian Gulf nations have finally figured out that they are victims of the racist, white nationalist, anti-Muslim hate crime orchestrated by Donald Trump and his hand-picked enablers.
