U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has donated $14,000 to the re-election campaign of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, according to Federal Election Commission records released on Thursday.
Pelosi gave $10,000 from her political action committee and another $4,000 from her campaign committee to Omar on July 22, a week after Pelosi endorsed Omar’s re-election campaign.
Omar will face four opponents in her district’s Aug. 11 Democratic primary. Her top opponent, Antone Melton-Meaux, outraised Omar between April and June with $3.3 million to Omar’s $470,000.
Melton-Meaux spent more than $1.7 million during the first few weeks of July, while Omar spent $784,000 during that period—leaving the former with $695,000 on hand to Omar’s $732,000.
Omar has perpetuated anti-Semitic tropes on Twitter and introduced a resolution in Congress that promotes boycotts of Israel, likening them to boycotts of Nazi Germany.
In February 2019, a month after being sworn in, Omar accused AIPAC of paying members of Congress to back Israel, saying it was “all about the Benjamins.”
The following month, she pointed fingers at her “Jewish colleagues” for attacking her Tlaib for labeling their criticisms as anti-Israel because of the Muslim faith of the two congresswomen, in addition to slamming her critics regarding “the political influence in this country that says it is OK to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
This led to the passing of a House resolution condemning anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred that did not call out Omar by name.
In response to Omar’s dual-loyalty accusation, Pelosi said at the time, “I don’t think our colleague is anti-Semitic. I think she has a different experience in the use of words [and] doesn’t understand that some of them are fraught with meaning.”
