Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said that he is willing to personally pay for a flight for Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar to go back to Somalia so she can better appreciate the United States, Yahoo News reports.
Omar was born in Somalia, a war-torn country in East Africa, but came to the United States in 1992, when she was 10 years old. She has since become a naturalized citizen.
Just months into her first term as a freshman Congresswoman, Omar has made a name for herself for several reasons, perhaps not all of them good. She and three female colleagues, all also freshmen, have been nicknamed “The Squad.”
All four women — Omar, plus Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — represent a far-left wing of the Democratic Party that is more progressive than most of the party or its platforms.
And all four women were famously told by Donald Trump a couple of weeks ago to “go back to their broken and crime-infested countries.”
Of the four, only Omar was not born in the United States.
That fact was not lost on a crowd at a Trump campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina a few days later. The crowd broke into a chant of “Send her back!” referring to Omar being sent back to Somalia.
Now, Paul is offering to foot the cost of that trip. Speaking to Breitbart News , Paul said that, while he’s not interested in forcing anyone to go anywhere, he’d be glad to pay for Omar to go see first-hand what’s happening in Somalia.
“I’m willing to contribute to buy her a ticket to go visit Somalia. I think she can look and maybe learn a little bit about the disaster that is Somalia,” he said.
He then went on to say that Somalia has “no capitalism” or “God-given rights” under a constitution, and that if Omar goes there, she might come back to the U.S. “and appreciate America more.”
Somalia essentially descended into anarchy following the collapse of its government and the outbreak of civil war in 1991. Over the next couple of decades, the country was ruled largely by customary and religious law, absent a strong government. However, the country has had a functioning government since 2012, according to Alarabiya .
And contrary to Paul’s claim that Somalia has neither a constitution nor God-given rights, it actually has both, according to BBC News . The country’s constitution, adopted in 2012, includes a bill of rights that declares everyone equal, regardless of their clan or religion.
