Ilhan Omar On Trump's Bid To Flip Minnesota: 'He Effed Around And Found Out'

The president routinely attacked the progressive congresswoman on the campaign trail leading up to the election.
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President Donald Trump, who routinely insulted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on the campaign trail, was convinced he’d flip Minnesota in the 2020 election. He didn’t.

He “effed around and found out,” Omar said Friday about Trump.

Omar discussed the president’s bid to win the state, and his attacks against her, with The Intercept’s Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim, on the podcast “Deconstructed.” At a rally last year, Trump called Omar a “fraud” and “disgrace to our country.” He has often unleashed xenophobic attacks against Omar, who was born in Somalia and whose family lived in a refugee camp in Kenya before moving to America when she was a child.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden won Minnesota with 52.6% of the vote, although the national result was not final as of Friday night.

Minnesota hadn’t voted Republican in a presidential race since Richard Nixon’s reelection in 1972. Still, Trump treated the state, where he narrowly lost in 2016, as a potential battleground and campaigned heavily there.

Omar, who won the Democratic primary for Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in August, campaigned and organized for Biden in her district and state leading up to the election.

″You get what you organized for,” Omar said on “Deconstructed.”

The progressive congresswoman, who handily won her reelection to Congress in the general election, said during the podcast interview that her team had shifted its focus to getting Biden elected after her primary win.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) joined a chorus of voices on Twitter praising Omar for her organizing work for Biden and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris in Minnesota.

“Shout out to @IlhanMN and @RashidaTlaib for the INCREDIBLE turnout and ground game they ran in two key counties of two key states, MI & MN.” Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet that also celebrated Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) for her organizing efforts in her Midwestern state.

On Twitter on Friday evening, Omar encouraged her followers to “breathe” and “take a moment” as Biden closed in on a 2020 election victory.

“Breathe, and rid yourself of all the emotional baggage of the past four years,” she wrote. “Check in on family and friends. We all have work to do as we bring everything into focus again.”

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