Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy faces a tough battle in winning over conservatives in his own party to claim the speaker’s gavel.
But he did make one overture they will appreciate.
According to Fox News, McCarthy pledged to remove radical Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar from the influential Foreign Affairs Committee once he takes charge.
McCarthy on Saturday told a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas that the Minnesota Democrat deserved the boot for her past anti-Semitic remarks.
“We watch antisemitism grow, not just on our campuses, but we watched it grow In the halls of Congress,” McCarthy told the group, Fox reported.
“I promised you last year that as speaker she will no longer be on Foreign Affairs, and I’m keeping that promise.”
Omar, a Somali-American Muslim immigrant, is a charter member of the left-wing “Squad,” led by ep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
As Fox noted, Omar has made repeated comments that “perpetuate antisemitic tropes.” Among those, she once said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, was “all about the Benjamins,” referring to $100 bills. She also once tweeted, “We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban,” which lumped America and Israel in with the terrorists who took over Afghanistan after President Joe Biden pulled U.S. forces out last year.
But she also has supported the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions policy, a left-wing movement many see as anti-Semitic because it seeks to economically punish Israel for its supposed maltreatment of Palestinians.
And Omar has criticized Jewish Americans for having “allegiance to a foreign country,” meaning Israel.
In March 2019, just two months after she took office, Republican Rep. Greg Steube of Sarasota led an effort to have Omar formally condemned by the House for such remarks.
Steube did so after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had once called on Omar to apologize for her comments, watered down a similar resolution and made it more about “anti-hate” generally.
Additionally in March 2019, Omar downplayed the 9/11 terrorist attacks by dismissively saying “some people did something” on that day during a speech to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
In his same speech, according to Fox, McCarthy promised to restore Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to her committee assignments. Pelosi kicked Greene off her committees after she allegedly made anti-Semitic remarks
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