Fact checkPoliticsPublished October 14, 2026

“Donald Trump has engaged in a campaign of lies and smears against Ilhan Omar for the past ten years.” — Ilhan Omar. Our verdict: Unverified.

“Donald Trump has engaged in a campaign of lies and smears against Ilhan Omar for the past ten years.” — Ilhan Omar. Our verdict: Unverified.
Ilhan OmarSpeechOctober 12, 2026

Ilhan Omar made the claim on 12 October 2026, in comments reported by News24 after a raid on her home in Washington, DC.

Our verdict

Unverified

We could not find enough public evidence to confirm or refute the claim that Donald Trump has run a ten-year campaign of lies and smears against Ilhan Omar. The record shows isolated hostile statements, but nothing that documents a sustained campaign across the full period.

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What we found

Ilhan Omar did make this statement, and a news report from News24 records her words directly. That part is not in doubt. What we could not verify is the underlying claim itself: that Donald Trump has carried out a decade-long campaign of lies and smears against her. The public record we found contains only scattered examples rather than a continuous pattern. A July 2019 post from Donald Trump called her "Foul Mouthed" and accused her of "hatred of our Country", and a February 2025 White House press release labelled one of her statements a "HOAX". These show occasional hostile language, but they do not establish a systematic campaign of false statements stretching back ten years. Other material we reviewed, including a 2021 impeachment resolution page from Ayanna Pressley's office, did not address the ten-year claim at all. Because the evidence is thin and spread across only a few points in time, we rate the claim unverifiable. We could not find enough public evidence to confirm or refute it. If you have records that shed light on this, please send them to us.

The evidence

1 of 4 sources support the claim; none contradict it.

Contradict 0Support 1Background 3
When each source was published
presidency.ucsb.edu · Jul 2019 · supports the claimpressley.house.gov · Jan 2021 · backgroundpresidency.ucsb.edu · Feb 2025 · backgroundJul 2019Feb 2025
  • Background

    A News24 report records Ilhan Omar saying that Donald Trump has targeted her with lies and smear campaigns for ten years. This confirms she made the statement, but does not by itself prove the claim is true. [1]

  • Supports the claim

    A July 2019 post from Donald Trump called Ilhan Omar "Foul Mouthed" and accused her of "hatred of our Country". This is one example of hostile language, but it is a single point in time. [2]

  • Background

    A February 2025 White House press release labelled a statement by Ilhan Omar a "HOAX". This shows official criticism of her, but it is not evidence of a decade-long campaign of lies. [3]

  • Background

    A 2021 page from Ayanna Pressley's office shows Ilhan Omar publicly describing Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. It does not mention any ten-year campaign of lies and smears. [4]

What we could not confirm

  • Whether Donald Trump made false statements about Ilhan Omar repeatedly over the full ten-year period.
  • Whether the hostile remarks we found form part of a deliberate, sustained campaign rather than isolated incidents.
  • Any comprehensive record of Donald Trump's public statements about Ilhan Omar from 2016 to 2026.

How we checked

We looked at news reports recording Ilhan Omar's statement, official White House and presidential records of Donald Trump's public remarks, and a congressional page referencing her views on him. We searched for a continuous record of statements about her across the ten-year period but found only isolated examples. We reviewed 4 relevant sources.

Sources

  1. [1]www.news24.com.au · Ilhan Omar responds to raid on home with five-word warning to Trump
  2. [2]presidency.ucsb.edu · Tweets of July 19, 2019 | The American Presidency Project · July 19, 2019
  3. [3]presidency.ucsb.edu · White House Press Release - FAKE NEWS: Hoax Machine Keeps Running | The American Presidency Project · February 4, 2025
  4. [4]pressley.house.gov · Pressley, Omar, Colleagues Unveil Privileged Impeachment Resolution Against President Donald J. Trump - Ayanna Pressley · January 7, 2021
  5. [5]Photo: Wikimedia Commons via Google Images, Creative Commons

Help us check this claim

We could not find enough public evidence to confirm or refute this claim. If you know of an official record, dataset, transcript or report that settles it, send us the link. We review every submission and update this fact check when the evidence changes the picture.

Measured Take updates fact checks when new evidence emerges. Corrections are noted on the page.

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