President Donald Trump told supporters in Michigan on Sunday that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is far from his least favorite liberal lawmaker, while once again calling on Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., to step down from Congress.
“Somehow, I don’t mind AOC that much,” Trump told the rally crowd. “I don’t know why, she doesn’t bug me too much.”
The remark stood out as unusually mild treatment of the New York progressive, especially when compared with the president’s comments about some of her Democratic colleagues.
Trump reserved much sharper words for Omar, renewing his demand that the Minnesota Democrat resign from Congress as a federal fraud probe into her intensifies.
“She’s a little troublemaker,” Trump said. “You know, she comes from Somalia — maybe the worst country in the world, has no government, has no anything, all they have is killing people.”
The president continued, “They kill people, they go after ships, they ransom ships — I’m amazed they can even do that, to be honest with you… then she comes to this country, and she says ‘I have Constitutional rights, and I don’t like the way you run the United States of America.. How dare you run it [this way].’ I tell ya, does it piss me off!”
While Trump spoke relatively warmly about Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman has not returned the favor in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, Ocasio-Cortez criticized the Trump administration over its push to restrict federal student loans, accusing it of “attacking women’s ability to get an education.”
“They don’t want women to go to college, y’all,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
The president’s Sunday visit to Michigan was aimed at boosting Republican Mike Rogers. Trump gave Rogers the nickname “Apple Pie” Rogers, saying the candidate is so quintessentially American.
Trump also spent a significant portion of the rally going after Rogers’ Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed.
“I’m here to keep a Jihadist, Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States Senator, and that’s the fact,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let that happen.”
The rally put the president’s contrasting views of Democratic lawmakers on full display. Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most prominent progressive voices in Congress, received a surprisingly soft assessment, with Trump admitting he could not explain why she does not bother him much.
Omar, by contrast, faced some of the president’s harshest criticism of the night. Trump took aim at her country of origin and at her criticism of how the United States is run, and he repeated his call for her resignation as the federal fraud probe moves forward.
Meanwhile, Trump’s push for Rogers and his attacks on El-Sayed underscored the president’s focus on the Michigan race, where he made clear he is determined to help Republicans keep the Democrat out of the Senate.
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