Conservative pundit Clay Travis has told Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar to “go back to Somalia” following her recent scathing criticism of the United States under President Donald Trump’s leadership.
Travis, co-founder of the Fox-owned sports and political commentary website OutKick, appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Tuesday evening and reacted angrily to footage of the congresswoman being interviewed by Democracy Now! and saying the U.S. was becoming “one of the worst countries” in the world under Trump.
“When I see a clip like that, Sean, presumably Ilhan Omar is a citizen of two different countries,” Travis fumed.
“I’m not, I’m a citizen of one country, I happen to think it’s the best in the history of the world, so I’m not going anywhere, but why doesn’t she go back to Somalia? If she’s now looking at the United States, thinks it’s an awful place, presumably she’s still a citizen of Somalia.”
He continued: “If I hated the country that I was in and I had dual citizenship, wouldn’t you go to the other one? I mean, I don’t give Rosie O’Donnell a lot of credit for anything, but she decided she didn’t like the United States anymore and she left and went to Ireland.”
The conversation then pivoted to mockery of O’Donnell, the chat show host and actress who recently relocated to the Republic of Ireland rather than endure four more years of Trump.
The Independent has contacted the congresswoman for comment.
Omar made the remarks that so infuriated the right-wing duo in response to Trump’s crackdown on anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, which saw the president send in the National Guard and Marines to support local law enforcement, against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.
“I grew up in a dictatorship and I don’t even remember ever witnessing anything like that,” Omar said, alluding to her early years in Somalia before she arrived in the U.S. as an asylum seeker aged 12.
“To have a democracy, a beacon of hope for the world, to now be turned into one of the, you know, one of the worst countries, where the military are in our streets without any regard for people’s constitutional rights, while our president’s spending millions of dollars propping himself up like a failed dictator with a military parade, it is really shocking.
“And it should be a wake up call for all Americans to say this is not the country we were born in, this is not the country we believe in, this is not the country our founding fathers imagined, and this is not the country that is supported by our Constitution, our ideals, our values, and we should all collectively be out in the streets rejecting what is taking place this week.”
Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul previously offered to buy Omar “a ticket to go visit Somalia” back in 2019, suggesting that “maybe after she’s visited Somalia for a while, she might come back and appreciate America more.”
The progressive congresswoman has long been a hate figure to conservatives, who have often targeted her over her willingness to criticise Israeli lobbying interests in Washington, D.C.
Travis, for his part, describes himself as a “radical moderate” and claims to have been a lifelong Democrat until Trump appeared on the scene a decade ago.
He co-hosts the talk radio program The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, which replaced Rush Limbaugh’s long-running broadcast in 2021, a huge influence on the emergence of the present populist American media environment dominated by Trump, MAGA, and Fox.
