“I am trying to figure out the way to do this.” Those words from MS NOW’s Chris Hayes say all you need to know (and likely all you will get) from his interview on Wednesday with Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. There is a litany of questions the liberal host never asked of Omar. Those questions have only increased over the years, leading to the current criminal investigation into immigration fraud. At points, Hayes sounded more like a supplicant than a journalist given his discomfort with asking pressing questions.
The interview had the journalistic nutritional content of a Slurpee that would give any liberal a sugar high and any non-liberal a stomachache.
Many of us have stressed that these allegations are unproven and that little evidence has been confirmed to support the underlying criminal charges. However, I have also written that Omar has been remarkably unforthcoming in rebutting the allegations or providing her own exculpatory information. Instead, she has spent years denouncing the allegations as racist or Islamophobic without addressing the specific claims.
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While the Biden administration began aspects of these investigations years ago, Omar again sat for another prolonged interview without being pressed (beyond cursory questions) about long-standing allegations.
Hayes exhaustively explored Omar’s feelings and reactions to the recent search while largely avoiding any detailed questions about the very allegations that a Washington, D.C., judge found sufficient to show probable cause of criminal conduct.
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It may be useful to consider 10 questions not asked of Ilhan Omar. Asking these questions is not to assume that the underlying claims are true, but to establish the facts from Omar’s perspective.
It took 12 minutes for Hayes to mention immigration fraud, and he did so by asking her, “How seriously do you take it?” He then prefaced the fraud question with a laugh, saying, “I am trying to figure out the way to do this that doesn’t sound like I’m insane.”
Hayes then laughed further with Omar about questions of marriage fraud and said, “There are right-wing people who believe” these allegations. After Omar agreed that such questions are “insane.”Â
Hayes made a series of statements about how “there is not even a kernel of truth” to these claims before inviting affirmations from Omar. He then made a general reference to “moving on to other allegations” without any details.
The questions not asked:
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In the interview, when Hayes moved on to Omar’s previous financial disclosure that she and her husband were worth $30 million before dropping to a little over $100,000, he again failed to address allegations that the drop in income was due to fraud. Instead, he asked about her “lifestyle,” then moved on to ask what it is like to be one of the least wealthy members of Congress.
