By Anmol Alphonso
An old video of former US President Donald Trump attacking his political rival Congresswoman Ilhan Omar in a speech and quoting a 2012 post by the latter where she criticised Israel has been cropped and shared with a false claim that Trump is denouncing Israel over the current conflict in the region.
BOOM found that the viral video has been taken from a 2019 campaign speech of Trump where he was actually quoting Omar and attacking her for condemning Israel, in one of her tweets from 2012, which now stands deleted.
In the 11 second video, Trump can be heard saying, "May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doing of Israel and the United States."
The viral video was posted on X by the handle @fatidemb with the caption, "Presidential candidate Donald Trump at a recent rally shockingly DENOUNCED Israel & the EVIL doing of the American government. Vote Trump and not geriatric Bidet people!"
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The cropped video is being shared on X with the false claim. An X handle @StolenDans posted the same video with the sarcastic caption referencing the recently released Hollywood movie Dune 2. The caption of the post read, "paul: i'm not the mahdi. paul after sipping that worm juice:"
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral video has been cropped and shared out of context to make the false claim that Donald Trump criticised Israel. In the original speech from 2019, Trump is criticising Democratic Party's Representative Ilhan Omar for her 2012 tweet against Israel and while doing so, was quoting it.
Taking a hint from the words in Trump's speech in the viral video, we ran a keyword search on Google for 'trump israel evil doings', and found several fact-checks on the viral video from October 2023. The same video was previously debunked by US fact-checkers when the viral video was being shared on Tik Tok with the same false claim linking it to the recent Israel-Palestine conflict that began around October 7, 2023.
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We watched the original speech that Trump had given during a campaign rally in Minneapolis, United States, and just before the viral statement that can be heard in the video, Trump can be heard criticising Omar who served in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2017 to 2019, representing part of Minneapolis.
At the 1.07 minutes timestamp, Trump can be heard saying, "Omar wrote that Israel has hypnotised the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them to see the evil doings of Israel and the United States. How do you have such a person representing you in Minnesota? I’m very angry at you people right now.”
The first part of the statement where he is quoting Omar and the last part where he is saying that he angry at the people of Minnesota for electing her has been cropped out of the viral video, removing the context to make the false claim.
The full statement of Trump can be seen below from October 2019.
We also checked for Omar's now deleted 2012 post on X that Trump referenced and found that Omar had indeed criticised Israel, however, she did not mention United States as Trump had claimed in his speech.
Omar's 2012 post on X read, "Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel"
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In January 2019, Omar in another post on X addressed her November 2012 post saying, "That statement came in the context of the Gaza War. It’s now apparent to me that I spent lots of energy putting my 2012 tweet in context and little energy is disavowing the anti-semitic trope I unknowingly used, which is unfortunate and offensive."
