A video of Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert calling Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar the “jihad squad” was viewed over 6.3 million times on Twitter Thursday.
In the clip posted by progressive account PatriotTakes, Boebert tells a group of supporters at an event in November 2021 about a time that Omar, of Minnesota, and one of three Muslim-Americans serving in Congress, was mistaken as a terrorist in an elevator on Capitol Hill.
“So the other night on the House floor was not my first jihad squad moment,” Boebert says at the start of the clip. “I was getting into an elevator with one of my staffers and he and I were leaving the Capitol, we’re going back to my office and we get in the elevator and I see a Capitol Police officer running hurriedly to the elevator.
“I see fret all over his face. And he’s reaching. The door is shutting. I can’t open it,” Boebert continues. “I look to my left and there she is, Ilhan Omar, and I said, ‘Well she doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine.’”
Boebert added at the end of her story that she then looked at Omar riding in the elevator with her, saying, “‘Look, the jihad squad decided to show up for work today.’”
Boebert has previously apologized for her remarks, which received widespread backlash after PatriotTakes first posted the clip in 2021. Omar has also said that the scenario was completely made up by Boebert.
The video’s repost on Thursday, however, was in response to a tweet from Boebert about Omar being stripped from her position on the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier in the day in the House GOP’s latest purge of Democratic committee members.
“You reap what you sow,” Boebert tweeted.
In the video response, the PatriotTakes account tweeted back, “Lauren Boebert faced zero consequences when she called Ilhan Omar a terrorist trying to blow up the Capitol building.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had previously promised to remove Omar from her committee position for her “repeated antisemitic and anti-American remarks,” referring to statements Omar made in the past suggesting that the GOP supported Israel because of donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Omar apologized for her statements in 2019, saying at the time that she wasn’t aware of “tropes about Jews and money.”
Omar has also stirred controversy for other criticisms of Israel and pro-Israel lobby groups in the U.S., including her tweet in 2012: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
Newsweek has reached out to Omar’s office for comment.
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