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    Thursday, April 25, 2024

    'Squad' member Omar says she's confident Trump will be impeached

    Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., walks to the chamber Thursday, March 7, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington, as the House was preparing to vote on a resolution to speak out against, as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, "anti-Semitism, anti-Islamophobia, anti-white supremacy and all the forms that it takes," an action sparked by remarks from Omar. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

    Rep. Ilhan Omar said it's a matter of when, not if, President Donald Trump will be impeached, and she's not worried about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others not moving ahead right now.

    "It is OK for some people to have hesitations, for other people to catch up to where some of us have been for a very long time," the first-term Democrat from Minnesota said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation," billed as her first one-on-one network interview.

    Omar, with New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Michigan's Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, refer to themselves as "the Squad" and drew repeated attacks from Trump over the summer.

    The president also has singled out Omar and Tlaib over what he's called their "hatred" of Israel. A plan by the two to visit Israel in August sparked controversy because they support a boycott of the country over its treatment of Palestinians. The lawmakers in 2018 became the first Muslim women elected to the U.S. Congress.

    The Minnesota representative said that with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing for re-election on Tuesday, she hopes people there will "make a different decision" and "recognize that his existence, his policies, his rhetoric really is contradictory to the peace that we are all hoping that that region receives and receives soon."

    Netanyahu's vow to annex West Bank territory if he's returned to office would kill the so-called two-state solution of peace between Israel and Palestine, Omar said.

    Omar, 37, defended her call to boycott Israel because "the opportunity to boycott, divest, sanction is the kind of pressure that leads to that peaceful process."

    She also stood by previous controversial statements about U.S. border agents and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, saying people wrongly imply intent to her comments and that she's offering a diverse point of view.

    "My constituents sent me to make sure that I was bringing in a conversation that others weren't having, that I was speaking for people who felt voiceless for a long time," Omar said.

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