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Conservative websites resurface 2016 video of Rep. Tlaib confronting Trump

President targeted Michigan Democrat and three other female Democrats of color last week

Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib had planned to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories along with Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)
Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib had planned to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories along with Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Multiple conservative websites sympathetic to President Donald Trump in his ongoing feud with four Democratic congresswomen of color, put up posts this weekend resurfacing a 2016 video of one of the ‘squad’ members disrupting a Trump event in Detroit.

“You guys are crazy!” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who was not in Congress at the time, can be heard yelling to attendees as she is being escorted from the event by a security guard leading her by her left arm. The videos that were surfaced over the weekend only show Tlaib being forcibly removed from the event and yelling back at Trump and then other attendees.

[Republican group apologizes for mocking congresswomen as ‘Jihad Squad’]

“You’re an animal! Get a job!” a person in the crowd yells back.

Fox News and at least three other leading conservative online publications — the Washington Examiner, The Blaze, and Townhall — had posts on their websites Monday with the video.

“WATCH: Screaming Rashida Tlaib physically removed from 2016 Trump event,” the Washington Examiner headline reads. “Remember: Tlaib Interrupted A Trump Speech To Business Leaders… All In The Name Of ‘Doing Her Part,’” the Townhall headline reads.

[‘His plan to pit us against one another:’ Progressive ‘squad’ responds to Trump attacks]

Tlaib’s dismissal from the August 2016 event — a speech about the economy with Michigan business leaders — along with more than a dozen other protesting women was publicized at the time. But it has taken on new significance with Trump singling out the Michigan Democrat and her fellow “squad” colleagues, Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

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Last week, all but four House Republicans voted against a resolution condemning Trump’s racist tweets from last Sunday, telling the four first-term congresswomen to “go back” to “the crime infested countries from which they came.”

Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, and Pressley were born in the United States. Omar, a Somali refugee, is a naturalized citizen.

In an August 2016 op-ed for the Detroit Free Press, Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, explained that she was moved to confront Trump at the event by his denigration during the 2016 campaign of immigrants and refugees and Muslims.

“I have heard critics calling it unbecoming of a former state legislator. Well, I believe it is unbecoming of any American to not stand up to Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric and tactics,” Tlaib wrote.

In the op-ed, she invoked the stories of civil rights leaders Rosa Parks, Walter Reuther, and others as inspiration to tell Trump that “our children deserve better.” Tlaib talks often of her two sons and how they have motivated her to pursue her political career.

Tlaib, who at the time was a former state congresswoman working at an economic and social justice outreach center in Detroit, said she told Trump to read the Constitution and set a better example for children before she was escorted out.

Tlaib’s office could not be reached for comment Monday about how the congresswoman frames the episode nearly three years later.

In her op-ed from 2016, Tlaib explained why she felt Trump needed to be met head-on.

“Courteous behavior can’t be reserved for someone who labels hardworking Mexican immigrants who have come to pursue the American Dream as ‘rapists.’ Social niceties are not in order for men who would turn away refugees fleeing for their lives based on their faith to have them suffer in camps. And complacency is not warranted for a presidential candidate who denigrates a mother and father who have lost their child in the ultimate sacrifice of military servicemen,” Tlaib wrote at the time.

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