Why Can't Our Trump Leave The Somali Community Alone?

Rally at the capitol to raise awareness of the human rights violations in Somalia — Source: UCG / Getty

A lot of people, white liberals mostly, seem to be of the opinion that America is the way it is right now because President Donald Trump is president. I’m pretty sure Trump is president because America is the way it is. The racism, xenophobia, sexism, general bigotry and rampant anti-intellectualism aren’t new phenomena in the U.S. — we just aren’t used to seeing it all validated on a daily, maybe hourly basis in virtually every speech, interview and social media post authored by a sitting president. There used to be a standard of decorum. There used to be an expectation of poise and civility.

There used to be a quiet part. Now, it’s all loud, proud and explicit white nationalism and endless buffoonery.

And right now, the entire Somali ethnicity is taking the brunt of it.

On Wednesday, during a White House Cabinet meeting, Trump declared that “Somalians” in Minnesota are all “crooks.”

“They’re all crooks, the Somalians,” Trump said, because America’s racist grandpa either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that natives of Somalia are referred to as Somalis (It’s both. He both doesn’t know and doesn’t care. “What they’ve done to Minnesota, the Somalians, they’re crooked as hell.”

Trump, of course, is referring to the Minnesota fraud scandal that he and his MAGA cultists just discovered in 2025, despite the fact that it has been investigated since 2021, and the fact that several dozen people had already been arrested, tried and convicted of crimes related to the scandal by the time Trump and MAGA influencer Nick Shirley turned it into national “news.”

Mind you, the mastermind of the whole thing was a white American woman, Aimee Bock, who was sentenced to nearly 42 years in prison just last week.

Also, as I noted when Trump generalized Somalis in Minnesota as “pirates” during his State of the Union address in February, roughly 80 people of Somali descent in Minnesota were charged with crimes related to fraud. Roughly 107,000 Somalis reside in the state.

To be fair, that speech might have been the first and only time he referred to Somalis as Somalis. (So, I stand corrected. He knows; he just doesn’t care.)

“When it comes to the corruption that is plundering — really, it’s plundering America — there’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer,” Trump claimed.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that, as Truth Out correctly noted, “Trump has pardoned dozens of individuals convicted of financial crimes and public corruption, including granting clemency last year to an individual who was found guilty of pilfering over $200 million in funds from Medicare.” (Point of note: the Minnesota scandal defrauded the federal government of roughly $250 million, $243 million of which Bock has been ordered to pay back. So, yeah, during his SOTU address, he was inflating the total sum of the fraud by about $18.75 billion.)

Then, of course, Trump had to include Rep. Ilhan Omar in his Klan-coded nonsense.

“They’re all crooks, the Somalians,” he said. “What they’ve done to Minnesota, the Somalians, they’re crooked as hell.”

The fact is, Trump has had special contempt for the Somali community both in and outside of the Twin Cities region since nearly the start of his second term.

Here he is calling Minnesota “very Somalia-oriented” and Somalis “low-IQ” for no discernible reason whatsoever.

Here he is responding to questions about the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., last year by randomly bashing Somali refugees in Minnesota, despite the fact that they had nothing to do with the shooting, which he admitted when asked what they had to do with anything by a reporter by responding, “Ah, nothing, but Somalians have caused a lot of trouble, they’re ripping us off a lot of money.”

Here he is on Fox News, claiming Omar, a whole-ass congresswoman, that she has no right to criticize his policies simply because she happened to be born in Somalia.

It’s also worth mentioning that a federal judge had to block the Trump administration from targeting Somalis who are in the U.S. legally in January of this year. Of course, that kind of Trump attack isn’t unique to Somalis, as judges also blocked the president from doing the same to documented Sudanese and Haitian migrants in January and February, respectively.

Still, with all the hate he has in his heart for all immigrants — who are not white non-victims of a fictional “white genocide” in South Africa — he still seems to circle back to the Somali community almost reflexively as of late. They haven’t done anything to him, but somehow they became the default focus of his constant white supremacist bloviating.

I know they must be tired — as are we all.

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