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As long as President Trump focused on what he said was the danger lurking on the southwestern border, he also referred to the alleged threat of a specific group already present in the country: Muslims.
During the 2016 campaign, he did not rule out the creation of a registry of Muslims in the United States. He claimed to have seen "thousands" of Muslims complain about the rooftops of New Jersey after 9/11, a statement widely denied. After deadly attacks in Paris and California, Trump called for a moratorium on Muslims traveling to the United States.
"I think Islam hates us," Trump told Anderson Cooper, CNN's host, in March 2016.
Now, 19 months before the 2020 election, Trump is trying to rally his base by picking up on that theme. And this time, he has a specific target: the representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress.
Mr. Trump and his team are trying to make sure that Ms. Omar, one of the progressive women in the House of Democrats relatively unknown to national politics, is known as the most important voice of the Democratic Party, no matter what. its current position. And they bet there will be limited inconveniences to doing so.
On Monday, Trump will visit Minnesota – a state that some of the president's aides are talking about as a place to broaden his electoral map – and hold a round table on the economy. The event takes place outside Ms. Omar's congressional district, but the president's decision to appear is a calculated choice.
His appearance in Minnesota comes after his tweet from a video interspersed with Ms. Omar speaking and the flaming towers of the World Trade Center. Ms. Omar's critics claimed that some of the remarks in which she highlighted the Islamophobia that Muslims faced after 9/11 were indifferent to the terrorist attacks.
Mr. Trump puts on an extreme image of the Democratic Party as a whole. And Ms. Omar became a subject of dispute for some members of her own party. After remarks she made about the Israeli lobby, they were condemned as anti-Semites by longtime Democrats, as well as Republicans and Mr. Trump.
But Trump's electoral success in 2016 was partly due to cultural wars and fears of an older white voting base that the country she knew was being lost. Like his harsh line on immigration, his plays on the fears of Muslims – including confusing them with terrorists – have polarized themselves within the electorate, but the only thing that has happened is that it is not the same. helped to tightly control his most enthusiastic voters. In South Carolina's Republican primaries in February 2016, for example, exit polls showed that 75 percent of voters favored a ban proposed by Muslims.
Now that he is turning towards 2020, he is betting that the electoral game will be able to benefit him again. It's a strategy that is likely to invoke dark forces in American society, Omar said Sunday night.
"Since the president's tweet on Friday night, the direct threats to me are increasing – many referring directly to the president's video or responding to it," Omar said. "It puts lives in danger. It must stop there.
President Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that she had asked for a review of Ms. Omar's safety, while Trump's staff insisted that the president do no harm.
"The president certainly does not want bad will and especially no violence against anyone," said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, press secretary at the White House, during the broadcast Sunday of "This Week" on ABC News.
Privately, Trump's advisers describe Ms. Omar as her ideal foil. His remarks about the power of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, combined with his role in a progressive contingent of junior Democrats in the House that sparked intra-party battles, were treated as a gift by the Republicans.
Atump's aides and allies are pleased that some of the Democratic hopes for the presidential election of 2020 defend her against the president's attacks, saying they think it will be detrimental to them in general elections.
Ms. Omar "is the perfect embodiment of the marked contrast that President Trump wants to paint for 2020," said Sam Nunberg, assistant to Trump's 2016 campaign. He added that Mr. Trump was linking Ms. Omar to more visible Democrats, such as her closest congressional ally, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez representative from New York, who Republicans sought to make boogeyman man.
"This contrast gives the president a chance to extend his support to 50 percent," said Nunberg.
But on Sunday, the Democrats said Trump was plunging into a case on which he has a fragile position.
"He has no moral authority to talk about 9/11," New York Democratic Party representative Jerrold Nadler said Sunday on the occasion of "The State of the Union" in New York. CNN. Mr. Nadler noted that Trump's real estate company has applied for and received post-attack subsidies for small businesses affected by the disaster.
Mr. Nadler said he thought that Ms. Omar's remarks about the 9/11 attacks were out of context.
"I had some problems with some of his other remarks, but not with that one," Nadler said.
The controversy resulted from Ms. Omar's remarks at an event held last month by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a rights organization, during which she focused on the attacks. against Muslims after 9/11. She said she "lived with the discomfort of a second-class citizen and, frankly, I'm fed up with it, and every Muslim in this country should be fed up".
"CAIR was founded after September 11, because they recognized that some people had done something and we were all starting to lose access to our civil liberties," she said. (The organization was founded in 1994.)
Omar's critics claimed that the words "some people did something" ignore terrorist attacks, but her supporters said her words were taken out of context.
The attack was not Mr. Trump's first attack on Ms. Omar. Although denounced several times for not having strongly condemned white nationalists trafficking anti-Semitism, the president rushed when Ms. Omar unleashed a firestorm in February with her comments on Israel, dismissing her subsequent apology and demanding her resignation.
"Congressman Omar is terrible, what she said," Trump told reporters.
Geoff Garin, an experienced Democratic strategist, said that Democratic presidential candidates who reacted to Trump's latest attacks on Omar kept a steady eye on his tactics. And he predicted that using such graphic images of one of the darkest days of the nation would have negative consequences for the president.
"Voters are shocked by the use of 9/11 for political purposes, and I guess moderate voters are going to see Trump's use of this as both ugly and extreme," M said. Garin. "I think his exploitative 9/11 exploit will dissuade more voters than he wins by attacking Democrats on this."
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