Ilhan Omar defends posting video that blamed Charlie Kirk for his own assassination

Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar defended her decision to post a video referring to conservative activist Charlie Kirk as “Dr. Frankenstein." The video blames Kirk for his own death, stating that “his monster shot him through the neck.”

Omar appeared on CNN, where host Kaitlan Collins pressed her on the post in the days following Kirk’s killing.

“I just think it was the video, where it called him Dr. Frankenstein, and said his monster shot him through the neck. I mean, obviously this is a person, and looking at this, this is someone who was a husband and a father, and in the days after his shocking death, that happened as a result of his views, or happened as a result as he was sharing his views, publicly with people, that people found it jarring to hear such criticism of that in the immediate aftermath of someone’s death,” Collins said.

“What I find jarring is that there’s so many people willing to excuse the most reprehensible things that he said, that they agree with that, that they’re willing to have monuments for him, that they want to create a day to honor him, and that they want to produce resolutions in the House of Congress, honoring his life and legacy,” Omar responded. “It is one thing to care about his life, because obviously so many people loved him, including his children and wife.”

She continued, “I am not going to sit here, and be judged for not wanting to honor any legacy this man has left behind, that should be in the dustbin of history, and we should hopefully move on and forget the hate that he spewed every single day.”

Last week, Republican lawmakers called for Omar to be censured and removed from committee assignments. On Wednesday, the House narrowly voted 214–213 to table a resolution introduced by Rep. Nancy Mace that would have done so. Mace claimed that Omar had “smeared Charlie Kirk and implied he was to blame for his own murder.”  Four Republicans joined Democrats to block the censure effort.