White House Posts Responds To Video of Ilhan Omar Discussing Possible Deportation With Photo Of Trump Waving Goodbye

The White House shared an image of President Donald Trump waving goodbye while working a McDonald's drive-thru window when responding to a clip from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) saying she is not worried about the impact of potentially being deported.

The White House did not provide context for the image. However, the clip-photo pairing invited interpretation that Trump was metaphorically waving Omar out of the country.

Omar's interview clip was from an October 31 appearance on The Dean Obeidallah Show where, reflecting on rhetoric claiming she could be deported despite being a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2000, she said

"I have no worry. I don't know how they take away my citizenship, like deport me. But I don't know why that's such a scary threat. I'm not the eight-year-old who escaped war anymore. I'm grown, my kids are grown, I can go live wherever I want."

The exchange follows recent criticism by Trump directed at Omar. On November 1 he reposted a video of Omar speaking at a rally along with a caption that read "She should go back!" on Truth Social.

Omar, who was born in Somalia and fled civil war at age 8 before arriving in the United States in 1995, became a U.S. citizen five years later. Trump has continued to question her legitimacy as an American public official. In September, he told reporters, "I suggested that maybe [Somalia] would like to take her back," later claiming Somalian leadership declined.

Trump also attacked Omar in early September after right-wing accounts highlighted the indictment of eight individuals in Minnesota accused of orchestrating an $8.4 million Medicaid housing-services fraud scheme.

In a Truth Social post, Trump asked if Omar "know[s] these people" and whether they were from her "home Country of Somalia," before listing allegations about Somalia's instability and corruption. He then accused Omar—who came to the U.S. as a refugee and became a citizen in 2000—of criticizing America while invoking a false, years-old claim that she married her brother to obtain citizenship, calling her "SCUM."