Donald Trump wishes he was as strong as Ilhan Omar

Donald Trump has spent a lifetime confusing volume with power – assuming the louder voice with the stronger one.

And yet, in the moment that mattered this week, it was Ilhan Omar who showed what strength actually looks like.

When the Minnesota congresswoman was attacked at a town hall, sprayed with an unknown substance and thrown onto the front line of America’s

It was composure and self-defense. 

Then it was defiance. ‘Please don’t let them have the show,’ she told the crowd, refusing to end the event or allow the disruption to claim the space.

That reaction did not come from nowhere. It came from a life shaped by a need for strength and resilience long before Trump’s politics entered the picture.

Omar is a former refugee and a survivor of war. 

She has known real fear – not the performative grievance that passes for it in Trump’s America, but the kind that comes from instability, violence, displacement and loss. 

People who grow up in those conditions learn that survival is not abstract. It is their life.

That is why the moment was so striking. Not just that Omar refused to be silenced afterwards, but that in the instant of attack she physically moved to protect herself, without drama or hesitation.

Donald Trump could never even conceive of the life that Omar has had. He was born insulated from consequence, raised in privilege, and rewarded for aggression at every stage.

His politics reflect that upbringing. He escalates because going ‘too far’ has never cost him anything and he provokes because he has never had to calculate personal risk.

And so he keeps underestimating people like Omar.

This matters because Trump is not a bystander in this story. He is the central cause. The unrepentant antagonist.

Omar has been explicit about the link between his rhetoric and the threats she faces. She receives the highest level of death threats of any member of Congress, which almost disappeared during the four years of Joe Biden’s presidency. They have exploded again under Trump’s return.

That’s not coincidence. It’s consequence.

Trump does not merely criticise Omar’s politics. He personalises her as a threat, casts her as illegitimate, un-American, and dangerous based on her race and faith.

He seems to revel in calling her a fraud, suggesting that Oman probably orchestrated the attack herself.

When the President of the United States chooses to undermine and vilify, the signal travels. As with the 6th January riots, some supporters hear permission and others hear incitement. 

What Trump consistently misunderstands is that intimidation only works until it meets resistance.

When he talked of taking Greenland by force, it was not bluster that stopped him, but firm pushback from Denmark, the UK, and European allies who refused to indulge the fantasy. Faced with collective resolve, Trump backed down and the noise evaporated.

The same dynamic applies here. Trump’s politics rely on the assumption that pressure will cause retreat. Omar’s response shows the limits of that logic.

She did not fold. She didn’t leave the stage and cede the space. Her refusal to stop speaking was not just personal courage, but a political act: a rejection of the idea that violence gets results.

That pattern is no longer confined to one woman or one city. Just days earlier, Maxwell Frost was allegedly assaulted, shoved and verbally abused by a man who shouted political slurs, and told Frost Trump was going to deport him, as security intervened.

Frost, the youngest member of Congress, attributed the attack to the country’s ongoing tension over immigration and referred to Trump as bringing out the worst in everybody. 

It’s simply another reminder that public service now carries an ever-present physical risk, particularly for lawmakers who do not fit the traditional mould of American power.

The common thread is not political or policy disagreement. It’s not a battle of ideas or visions.

It’s entirely about identity. Omar, a Muslim woman, a refugee. Frost, a young Black man.

Words may be abstract, but the threat they carry has real-life implications. With his rhetoric of repetition, escalation, and dehumanisation, Trump’s attacks don’t just animate online mobs. They bleed into real rooms, real crowds, real moments where violence becomes plausible.

Trump is obsessed with making everything bigger, louder, and more aggressive – more land, more money, more domination. All by beating down others. Because above all else, he needs to be seen as strong.

The irony is that it’s this unrestrained arrogance that is his greatest weakness. 

Trump accuses Omar of being a fraud. But when tested, Omar demonstrated nothing but integrity: resilience, composure, and clarity under threat. 

In fact, with his tried-and tested defaults of minimisation, denial, and insult, any accusations of fraudulent behavior would be better levelled at the President himself.

Trump has dismissed the attack on Omar, brushing it off and falling back on his failsafe name-calling, because he cannot acknowledge that his words have weight, and that when people act on them, the responsibility is his, and his alone.

His incessant need to revert to a schoolyard bully, for whom consequences do not exist, just demonstrates his frailty.

By contrast, Ilhan Omar understands that words matter because she has lived in a world where they incite violence, not just clicks. She knows that public spaces must be defended, not surrendered, because she’s been there when intimidation goes unanswered.

Donald Trump wishes he were as strong as Ilhan Omar. He wishes he had faced something real, survived it, and emerged with clarity rather than cruelty. But he hasn’t. And that is why he keeps misjudging her.

He is fighting with bluster. She is standing on experience. In American politics right now, that difference is becoming impossible to ignore.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@usnewsrank.com. 

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