President Donald Trump on Wednesday escalated his rhetoric against two Muslim Democratic lawmakers, saying in a social media post that Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., “look like they should be institutionalized” and suggesting that “we should send them back from where they came.”
The remarks came a day after Trump’s State of the Union address, where Omar and Tlaib were among some of his loudest detractors. The pair sat next to each other and heckled Trump numerous times throughout his speech.
“When you watch Low IQ Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, as they screamed uncontrollably last night at the very elegant State of the Union, such an important and beautiful event, they had the bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people, LUNATICS, mentally deranged and sick who, frankly, look like they should be institutionalized,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
“When people can behave like that, and knowing that they are Crooked and Corrupt Politicians, so bad for our Country, we should send them back from where they came — as fast as possible,” he added.
Omar, who came to the United States as a refugee from Somalia, is a naturalized U.S. citizen. Tlaib, who was born in Detroit, has birthright citizenship.
As Trump talked about funding for the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement agencies during his speech, Tlaib accused Trump of “killing Americans” and shouted that Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old who was fatally shot by a federal officer in Minneapolis last month, “wasn’t a criminal.”
Omar also yelled, “You have killed Americans,” as Trump spoke about his immigration enforcement policies. She repeatedly called Trump a “liar” when he made false claims about an alleged welfare fraud scandal, linking it to Somali immigrants in Minnesota.
Tlaib and Omar jeered at one point when the president said he has ended eight wars, though some of those claims have been questioned as misleading or in dispute. Tlaib also shouted about files involving the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and called on Trump to release the rest of them related to the investigation. While the Department of Justice has released millions of the documents, Democrats have accused the agency of withholding files despite the legal requirement that all of them be released.
Republicans later denounced the outbursts from several Democrats. After Trump’s address, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called the jeers “absolutely shameful.”
On Wednesday, a now-deleted post on X from Trump War Room, which describes itself as the official war room for Trump’s political operation, echoed the president’s sharp anti-immigrant rhetoric.
“Import the 3rd world, become the 3rd world,” the post said. It then quoted Trump’s address to Congress, writing, “Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings us these problems right here to the USA and it is the American people who paid the price.”
That post was later deleted, but a post quoting Trump without the “Import the 3rd world, become the 3rd world” language remains on the site.
Kevin Frey and Mychael Schnell contributed to this report.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at CNN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.