When Political Theater Becomes Policy: Trump, Ilhan Omar, and the Cost of Sensationalism

I watched with a familiar mixture of fatigue and anger as President Trump told reporters that he had suggested sending Rep. Ilhan Omar "back" to Somalia and that, according to him, Somalia "didn't want her." The claim landed like a provocation designed to dominate the news cycle — and it provoked precisely the response it sought.

Omar’s reply was short, sharp and human: she called him a "lying buffoon" on social media — a line that captured both the personal sting of the remark and its political absurdity. NBC’s live reporting captured the exchange and the context in which Trump made it (NBC News). Raw Story ran with Omar’s retort the same day (Raw Story).

Those links are not just footnotes. They are proof of how a single, reckless sentence from the podium can cascade through our public discourse and change the subject away from governance and toward spectacle.

Why this matters — beyond the insult

I want to be clear: this is not merely a personal dispute between two political actors. What we are witnessing is a pattern with real consequences:

• Weaponizing birthplace as disqualifying identity. Ilhan Omar is an American citizen and an elected representative. Reducing her to a foreign-born outsider is meant to strip her of legitimacy and to signal to others — particularly immigrant communities — that they are second-class participants in the civic life of this country.
• Encouraging xenophobia and normalizing exclusion. When a national leader casually suggests a lawmaker be "sent back," it amplifies hostility toward entire communities and risks making prejudice part of mainstream political discourse.
• Distracting the electorate. Every circus act on the podium is news oxygen for outlets that reward outrage. The more outrageous the line, the longer the clip runs on TV and the more it crowds out sustained scrutiny of policy and public administration.

The role of the media: complicit or corrective?

I have long been skeptical of the media’s appetite for spectacle. Years ago I wrote about that basic rule of journalism — "If a dog bites a man, that is not news; but if a man bites a dog, that is news" — and I argued that the press often privileges the sensational at the cost of the systemic story (Man bites dog). That essay wasn’t a denunciation of daily reporting; it was a plea for proportion.

Today the plea feels even more urgent. When outlets endlessly replay incendiary lines without the context or fact-checking to temper them, they become amplifiers for political theater rather than arenas for accountability.

Facts, verification, and the burden of proof

Two immediate truths matter here:

1. Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia and came to the United States as a refugee. Her life story — the refugee child who became a member of Congress — is testimony to the possibilities of democratic societies.
2. Claims that a foreign government "refused to take her back" are extraordinary and require verification. Extraordinary claims need public evidence; the default of journalism should be verification, not viral repetition.

I applaud reporters who attach sources and context to these stories. I worry about the hundreds of thousands of impressions generated by clips that lack that discipline.

What this moment should teach us

If I step back from the immediate heat of the exchange, a few larger lessons stand out:

• Leaders must be held to standards beyond mere rhetoric. Words from the podium shape public norms. When those words are exclusionary, they alter the civic climate.
• The media must resist the economics of outrage whenever possible. Sensational lines should not crowd out sober analysis — especially not when the stakes involve the civic inclusion of minorities.
• Citizens need to be literate not only in the facts of politics but in the methods of verification. We should expect — and insist upon — that claims presented as facts come with evidence.

A personal note on representation

I have written elsewhere about the importance of taking systemic problems seriously rather than dwelling forever on sensational acts. Sensationalism sells airtime; it rarely solves hunger, judicial delay, or corruption. But there’s another side to this: representation matters. When people who fled violence and displacement find a voice in our legislatures, that is a sign of democratic resilience. To see that voice treated as an alien curiosity is to misunderstand what democracy should be.

Closing thoughts

This episode — Trump’s claim and Omar’s blistering reply — is emblematic of a political era where provocation is strategy and the press feeds the spectacle. If we want better politics, we must demand better accountability: insist that public claims be sourced, that journalists supply proportion and context, and that civic institutions protect the dignity of representatives who come from margins.

And yes: looking back at my older post about media priorities (Man bites dog), I am reminded how long I have warned about this tendency. That earlier critique feels, sadly, validated today — and that validation is not a comfort. It is a call to act.

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Regards,
Hemen Parekh