Ilhan Omar Misspells Book of Bible in Tweet Designed To Shame Rubio for His Faith
In 1992, then-Vice President Dan Quayle corrected a kid’s spelling of the word “potato” on the chalkboard during a school visit, prompting the student to add an “e” to the end of the word. Thus did Quayle become the butt of jokes for weeks to come.
“It was more than a gaffe,” Quayle said in his memoirs, according to BuzzFeed. “It was a ‘defining moment’ of the worst imaginable kind. I can’t overstate how discouraging and exasperating the whole event was.”
We live in different times, and Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — powerful though she may indeed be — isn’t the vice president. Yet, a poorly spelled tweet in an attempt to own Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio over his attack on a Georgia senatorial candidate brings back memories of ol’ Dan — and makes us wonder whether a selectively amnesiac media will remember this one.
The exchange of contumely began over remarks made by Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidate in one of the two Georgia senatorial runoffs this January which will determine the balance of the upper chamber. Warnock — in one of his many, many controversial statements from the pulpit — said in 2011 sermon that “nobody can serve God and the military.”
“You can’t serve God and money. You cannot serve God and mammon at the same time. America, choose ye this day who you will serve. Choose ye this day,” said Warnock, now the head pastor at historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the congregation where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.
“Not shocked #Georgia Democrat Senate candidate Raphael Warnock said ‘You cannot serve God and the military’ at the same time,” Rubio tweeted on Wednesday.
Not shocked #Georgia Democrat Senate candidate Raphael Warnock said “You cannot serve God and the military” at the same time. These & even crazier things is what the radicals who control the Democratic party’s activist & small dollar donor base believepic.twitter.com/bQyBuKLwjb
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 18, 2020
“These & even crazier things is what the radicals who control the Democratic party’s activist & small dollar donor base believe.”
[firefly_poll]
Omar took aim at Rubio and proceeded to hit herself instead.
Beginning with a flushed-face emoji, she wrote, “Mathews 6:24.”
“’No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and dmoney.’ The lies and smears of the GOP have no boundaries, but this is a disgrace and shameful,” Omar added.
? Mathews 6:24
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and dmoney.”
The lies and smears of the GOP have no boundaries, but this is a disgrace and shameful. https://t.co/1G6OhsL2B5
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 18, 2020
Good work. That’ll own him.
“The point here is that as a Muslim I know that @ReverendWarnock is quoting scripture in his sermon here, so I am sure Rubio does too, but he is willing to lie and make mockery of himself,” she said in a subsequent tweet.
The point here is that as a Muslim I know that @ReverendWarnock is quoting scripture in his sermon here, so I am sure Rubio does too, but he is willing to lie and make mockery of himself.
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 18, 2020
The general impression most people had was that it wasn’t Sen. Rubio who was willing to “make [a] mockery of himself.”
First word of the tweet and she misspells the first book of the New Testament as “Matthews.” https://t.co/2aGVzoBwnt
— Students For Trump (@TrumpStudents) November 18, 2020
Proving, once again, that a LITTLE knowledge of Christianity can be a dangerous and counterproductive thing. https://t.co/Ci2Mo43LU0
— David Krider (@DavidKrider1) November 19, 2020
Bible expert Ilhan Omar quotes the book of “Mathews”
Also, she has no idea what she is talking about and she’s wrong https://t.co/OdZnaOSZHa
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 18, 2020
Now, as for whether she knew what she was talking about in the tweet, if you look beyond the misspellings (including “Mathews 6:24,” the source of endless Chris Matthews/MSNBC jokes on Twitter), the verdict on that one — even with the most gracious reading of the logic — is still pretty much no.
This is, not coincidentally, the same line of logic that Warnock’s campaign gave: “This sermon is based on a biblical verse that reads ‘No man can serve two masters … Ye cannot serve God and mammon,’ a biblical term for wealth,” Terrence Clark, the Warnock campaign’s communications director, said in a statement to Fox News. “Reverend Warnock was speaking about the need to commit to moral life before pursuing other priorities.”
While God ought to be before everything, it’s curious that mammon is associated with the U.S. military, a career not known as a straight shot to earning your first million by 30.
Silicon Valley project manager, manning a bond-trading desk at Goldman Sachs — these are things I would associate with mammon. Associating mammon with any sort of career-based preoccupation is a bit problematic, especially when you’re dealing with the military. The only difference, of course, would be if you had some ugly presuppositions about the American military.
But that’s for another day. What everyone seemed to notice was the Dan Quayle-like misspellings.
“Mathews” hahahaahhahahahahahahhahahahahah
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) November 18, 2020
Please now turn to the book of Chris Matthews, Season 4, Episode 39
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 18, 2020
I love Ross Mathews! I didn’t know he had a book though… pic.twitter.com/Vqqq7Vqw7g
— Bartleby (@ElderBartleby) November 18, 2020
The Book of Mathews (more preachy than one would’ve expected, tbh): pic.twitter.com/Cnkt831XP5
— Bartleby (@ElderBartleby) November 18, 2020
Love the Book of Mathews. Has one Super Bowl ring on top of it!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/w8NDFG10C0
— jkla (@jackkleftankle) November 19, 2020
Shaming someone on their faith — namely Marco Rubio — is a staple of discourse on the left, sadly, because there’s apparently a redacted version of the Bible floating around out there that blacks out everything that isn’t “Judge not” and “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” as if it were a CIA document.
However, when you go that route, you’d best aim correctly. It helps knowing, for instance, the book of the Bible (Matthew) or what “mammon” really means. It’s almost like “dmoney” is the cherry on top of this mess — superfluous yet welcome.
Rep. Omar will probably never (heaven forfend) end up as vice president.
Still, she’s earned a moment where we can all turn to George H.W. Bush’s second-in-command, take a deep breath, and tell him, “Mr. Quayle, we all knew Rep. Omar. She wasn’t a friend of ours. Mr. Quayle, when it comes to misspellings, you’re no Ilhan Omar.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
