Reporter asks Rubio to delete tweet with edited video of his interview with Omar: ‘Shame on you’

A reporter asked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to delete a clip of a 2018 interview he did with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) that he said was “selectively-edited.”

Rubio tweeted a clip of then-candidate Omar’s interview with Al Jazeera that is missing a segment of her nuanced remarks, using them to call her racist against white people. 

“Senator @marcorubio, will you delete this tweet and apologize? You’re sharing a selectively-edited video from my show @AJUpFront to make @IlhanMN look bad and increase the number of death threats she already gets. Shame on you,” tweeted Mehdi Hasan, who conducted the interview with the freshman representative last year.

Senator @marcorubio will you delete this tweet and apologize? You’re sharing a selectively-edited video from my show @AJUpFront to make @IlhanMN look bad and increase the number of death threats she already gets. Shame on you. Here’s the un-edited clip:https://t.co/1xX5KMns8N https://t.co/9lOAr67iCX

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 25, 2019

Hasan also included a link to the full interview. 

Rubio had hours earlier tweeted the edited 40-second clip from the 10-minute interview, saying, “I am sure the media will hound every Democrat to denounce this statement as racist. Right?”

In the edited segment Rubio shared, which was resurfaced by the Christian Broadcasting Network this week, Omar said, “Our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country.”

It abruptly jumps to Omar saying, “We should be profiling, monitoring and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.”

The missing segment in the edited clip cuts out Omar saying, “So if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe, Americans safe inside of this country,” in reference to how she feels over fear of “jihadist terrorism.” 

Members of the media that Rubio called on to “hound Democrats” were quick to question his sharing of the edited segment. 

In response, Rubio said in a statement “These questions prove my point.”

“If a Republican grouped all men of any background or ethnicity together, in any negative context — especially terrorism — many in the media would immediately demand that other Republicans disavow their statement. But when Rep. Omar suggested white men — ‪not white supremacists or white nationalists, white men — pose a greater danger than jihadists, many in the ‪media rushed to her defense, and attacked me for pointing out this double standard.”

Rubio did not respond to The Hill’s question about whether he was aware the video was edited before sharing.

The Florida senator made a similar statement ridiculing calling comments “racist” last week when he refused to denounce President Trump’s tweet telling Omar and fellow progressive congresswomen of color to “go back” where they came from. 

He also wouldn’t call the subsequent rally chants of “send her back” racist. 

“It’s a stupid game that I refuse to play,” Rubio had tweeted. 

Omar’s office has not returned a request for comment.