Fact Check: Was Ilhan Omar censured and fined after outburst at Trump's SOTU address?
WASHINGTON, DC: Following the outburst by Minnesota Rep Ilhan Omar on Tuesday after President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech on Somali fraud in the state, a rumor has been circulating on social media spaces claiming that Omar has been censured and fined by the House Ethics Committee. Let us examine and fact-check the viral claim.
Claim: Ilhan Omar has been fined and censured
The claim originated as a Facebook post published on Wednesday, February 25, which came with a caption, stating, “Ilhan Omar has been censured and fined $70,000 by the House Ethics Committee after her disgusting outbursts.”
The claim has garnered hundreds of thousands of views along with thousands of likes and shares as of this writing.
Many commenting under the post even appear to believe the claim to be true, while a few others expressed scepticism.
Fact Check: False, the claim originated as a parody
The claim, however, is not true as it is not supported by any evidence. Moreover, the Facebook page that posts the claim is a parody account, and its bio even states, “The flagship of the ALLOD network of trollery and propaganda for cash. Nothing on this page is real.”
Although there have been attempts to censure Omar earlier, there are no recent reports by any credible news media outlets that support the viral claim, which, if true, would have been widely covered.
A search on Google also does not produce any relevant results supporting the claim.
Ilhan Omar disrupts Donald Trump's SOTU address
During Trump’s speech at Tuesday’s State of the Union, Omar and Rashida Tlaib repeatedly yelled at Trump, objecting to his characterization of Minnesota’s Somali community as 'pirates' and accusing him of enabling the deaths of US citizens through his hardline immigration crackdown in the state.
“You have killed Americans,” Omar, a Somali American who represents a Minnesota district, shouted multiple times at Trump, before gesturing at him and adding, “You should be ashamed.”
Despite many of her colleagues opting to boycott the speech, Omar insisted that being in the room was a strategic necessity to prevent the President's narrative from going unchallenged.
“It was important for me and the Minnesota Democratic delegation to go, because we believed it was important to continue to highlight what the occupation that we have been living through really meant for Minnesotans, to understand the weaponization of the federal law enforcement against Minnesotans and the terror that we've experienced,” Omar stated.
