Tlaib: ‘Shame on’ New York Post for ‘spreading hate’ with anti-Omar cover

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on Thursday blasted the New York Post for a cover invoking the 9/11 attacks to denounce Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

“The NY Post knows exactly what it’s doing – taking quotes out of context and evoking painful imagery to spread hate and endangering the life of Rep. Omar,” Tlaib, who along with Omar are the first Muslim women elected to Congress, tweeted. “Shame on them, and shame on Rupert Murdoch.” 

The NY Post knows exactly what it’s doing – taking quotes out of context and evoking painful imagery to spread hate and endangering the life of Rep. Omar. Shame on them, and shame on Rupert Murdoch.

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) April 11, 2019

{mosads}The cover comes in response to remarks Omar made in a speech before the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) during which she said the attacks led some people to equate all Muslims with the 9/11 hijackers.

“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,” she said.

The tabloid’s cover depicts the collision of two airliners with the World Trade Center towers and reads: “Here’s your something: 2,977 people dead by terrorism.”  

Tlaib said Thursday on MSNBC that the cover was “just wrong.”

“People have written about the fact that they took those words and completely transformed it to be something ugly and something hateful and that’s exactly what it wasn’t,” Tlaib said. “She was talking about civil liberties and civil rights issues.”

“They do this all the time to us, especially women of color,” she added. “They take our words out of context because they’re afraid because we speak truth, we speak truth to power.”

Conservatives have seized on Omar’s comment to accuse her of minimizing the terrorist attacks.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) called the comment “unbelievable” and “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade questioned whether Omar was “an American first.”

A New York man was arrested in early April for allegedly threatening to murder Omar. 

She accused Crenshaw of “incitement” against her in the wake of the threat, which Crenshaw denied.

–This report was updated at 12:27 p.m.