Kevin McCarthy Plans to Oust Ilhan Omar From House Committee for ‘Anti-Semitic’ Comments

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) speaks at a press conference on Capitol Hll in Washington on July 15, 2019. Holly Kellum/NTD

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Nov. 19 that when he becomes speaker of the House next year, he will remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee because of her remarks that many deemed anti-Semitic.

“We watch anti-Semitism grow, not just on our campuses, but we watched it grow in the halls of Congress,” McCarthy said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas on Nov. 19.

“I promised you last year that as speaker, she [Omar] will no longer be on Foreign Affairs, and I’m keeping that promise,” he told a cheering audience.

Omar, a Muslim immigrant of Somali descent, has been condemned for her remarks on the U.S.–Israel relationship several times in recent years, including by the leadership of her own party.

In 2019, the first-term congresswoman wrote on Twitter that the U.S. support of Israel is “all about the Benjamins.” That prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats to issue a joint statement, saying that the comment invoked a long-standing anti-Semitic trope and was “deeply offensive.”

President Donald Trump also weighed in at that time to call for Omar’s expulsion.

“Anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress,” Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. “And I think she should either resign from Congress or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”

Plan to Expel Democrats From Committees

This isn’t the first time McCarthy has said he wants to expel Omar from her committee assignment. In an interview with Breitbart in January, he said he was planning to oust Reps. Omar, Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from their respective committees if Republicans secure a majority in the House after the midterms.

“Ilhan Omar should not be serving on Foreign Affairs,” McCarthy said at that time. “You had Ilhan Omar, who earlier referred to my support for Israel in an earlier Congress was ‘all about the Benjamins’ and never apologized.”

McCarthy argued that the two California Democrats shouldn’t stay on the House Intelligence Committee, either. He pointed to Swalwell’s affair with an alleged Chinese Communist Party spy and Schiff’s role in promoting the false assertion that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

“You look at Adam Schiff—he should not be serving on Intel when he has openly, knowingly now used a fake dossier, lied to the American public in the process and doesn’t have any ill will, [and] says he wants to continue to do it.”