The next is the transcript of the interview with Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, that aired on “Face the Country with Margaret Brennan” on Dec. 7, 2025.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we are joined now via Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Welcome to this system.
REP. ILHAN OMAR: Thanks, Margaret.
REP. OMAR: We have now so much to get to with you, however I need to pick out up on the place the Treasury Secretary simply left off. He alleged that individuals who had been tied to you or your marketing campaign had been concerned on this wide, brazen scheme to tear off the Minnesota state welfare machine. Do you wish to have to reply to that? Have you learnt what he’s regarding?
REP. OMAR: I actually do not, and I do not believe the Secretary himself understands what he is regarding. We clearly had individuals who had been ready to donate to our marketing campaign that had been concerned. We despatched that cash again a pair years in the past. And in reality, I used to be some of the first contributors of Congress to ship a letter to the Secretary of Ag asking them to appear into what I believed was once a reprehensible fraud that was once going on inside the program.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So this was once only for our target market. The Biden-era Justice Division referred to as it the most important COVID fraud scheme within the nation, and this was once pocketing COVID-era welfare price range, greater than a thousand million greenbacks in taxpayer cash that was once stolen. It was once beautiful, beautiful surprising. Of the 87 other people charged, all however 8 are of Somali descent, and that has added to the highlight being put in particular for your group. Why do you suppose this fraud was once allowed to get so fashionable?
REP. OMAR: I need to say, , this additionally has an affect on Somalis, as a result of we also are taxpayers in Minnesota. We additionally can have benefited from this system and the cash that was once stolen. And so it is been actually irritating for other people not to recognize the truth that we are, , we are additionally as Minnesotans as taxpayers, actually disappointed and offended concerning the fraud that has came about.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So do you suppose, regardless that, that there was once a failure via the Democratic state executive to police itself? This can be a brazen fraudulent job right here.
REP. OMAR: Yeah, and that’s what I alluded to in my letter that I had despatched to the Secretary of Ag was once to peer the place issues had been going incorrect. How can this amount of cash disappear fraudulently with out there being alarms being spark off? And it’s one thing that , we need to proceed to research. We need to proceed to invite the ones questions.
MARGARET BRENNAN: As a result of, as , some of the preliminary defenses via the group on the middle of the fraud, Feeding Our Long run, was once to assert the probe was once because of racism. Do you suppose that this was once all about negligence, or that it was once like political concern of alienating the Somali group?
REP. OMAR: So it’s important to remember the fact that the girl who led this system is a Caucasian lady, and that was once her method of constructing certain that this could proceed to occur via the usage of no matter rhetoric that was once to be had to her. We do know that after the cash was once stopped, they did sue the AG. Legal professional Normal Keith Ellison defended the dep. in that lawsuit. It was once a pass judgement on that mentioned it must contin- that cash must proceed to move out. And so this wasn’t one thing that folks weren’t having a look at. There was once all the time the ones, the ones alarms, and we will be able to proceed to grasp the place issues would possibly have long past incorrect as those investigations proceed, and as those fraudsters are prosecuted and despatched to prison.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Neatly, it’ll have affect in your group, as a result of we have now already heard that the pinnacle of Medicare and Medicaid say they’ll have a brand new coverage that applies to Minnesota. You heard the Treasury Secretary say they are investigating. However there is any other thread right here, as a result of Space Republicans and the Treasury Secretary simply now talked a couple of hyperlink to terrorism, a imaginable hyperlink. He mentioned they are simply now starting to glance into it. How assured are you that that is a false declare?
REP. OMAR: I am beautiful assured these days, as a result of there are individuals who had been prosecuted and who’ve been sentenced. If there was once a linkage in that, the cash that they’d stolen going to terrorism, then that may be a failure of the FBI and our court docket machine in no longer figuring that out and principally charging them with- with those, with those fees. And so I know that for a few years, this kind of like alarm that there’s cash being transferred in the course of the airport in luggage and going to terrorism has all- that accusation has all the time existed. There hasn’t ever been right here and there in the ones accusations. But when that’s the case, if cash from U.S. tax greenbacks is being despatched to assist with terrorism in Somalia, we need to know and we would like the ones other people prosecuted, and we need to make certain that that does not ever occur once more.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So there are 80,000 other people of Somali descent to your state, however the President has been very centered no longer simply on them, however on you. On this ordinary cupboard assembly, he mentioned, Somalis, quote, “come from hell.” “They whinge and so they do not anything however complain.” Take a pay attention.
[SOUND ON TAPE BEGINS]
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Those are those who do not anything however whinge. They whinge, and from the place they got here from, they have got were given not anything.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: …We are not looking for them in our nation. Allow them to return to the place they got here from and attach it.”
[SOUND ON TAPE ENDS]
MARGARET BRENNAN: That knocking is vehement settlement from his Cupboard contributors there. I simply surprise what the response is to your district to have that from the absolute best place of work within the land.
REP. OMAR: It is disgusting. It is totally disgusting. Those are American citizens that he’s calling rubbish. And we really feel like there’s an bad obsession that he has at the Somali group, and an bad and creepy obsession that he has with me. I feel it is usually actually essential for us to remember the fact that this sort of hateful rhetoric and this degree of dehumanizing may end up in unhealthy movements via individuals who pay attention to the president.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And 95% of the Somalis to your state are U.S. electorate.
REP. OMAR: Sure.
MARAGARET BRENNAN: Only for readability there. However the president has limited all immigration processing, together with asylum claims from Somalis already on U.S. soil, at the side of 18 different international locations. ICE stories it has rounded up about 19 other people, and so they put out press releases with the photographs of about 5 of them that they are saying are the worst of the worst is that everything of the crackdown thus far?
REP. OMAR: Yeah, thus far we all know of the folks that they’ve picked up in Minnesota, about 5 of them are Somalis, and from what I’ve learn and from the folks that I have spoken to, they all had already had orders of removing. So those don’t seem to be people who find themselves undocumented, however individuals who have dedicated crimes and who must have already been despatched in a foreign country.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I need to ask you one thing else that the architect of the President’s immigration coverage, Stephen Miller, mentioned. On Thanksgiving day he posted, “No magic transformation happens when failed states go borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the prerequisites. and terrors, in their damaged homelands.”
What do you’re making of this argument of failure to assimilate and kind of ruining The us. How do you realize this?
REP. OMAR: I imply, after I take into consideration Stephen Miller and his white supremist rhetoric, it reminds me–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –That is the way you listen it–
REP. OMAR: Sure, it jogs my memory of the way in which the Nazis described Jewish other people in Germany. And , as we all know, there were many immigrants who’ve attempted to return to the USA who’ve grew to become again, , one in every of them being Jewish immigrants. We know how that folks had been described who had been coming from Eire, Irish immigrants. We know how by which other people had been described again then, when there have been Italian immigrants. And to me, , we are, we are, sure, after all, ethnically Somali, we’re on this nation as American citizens, we’re electorate, we’re a productive a part of this country, and we will be able to proceed to be.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Congresswoman Omar, thanks in your time these days. And we will be proper again with much more Face the Country. Stick with us.
