A resurfaced video clip of Rep. Ilhan Omar misreading "World War II" as "World War Eleven" during a Capitol Hill news conference has drawn widespread mockery online, and fresh attention to a congresswoman already facing scrutiny over a federal fraud investigation in her home state of Minnesota.
Omar made the error during opening remarks at a Democratic press event last year, held to promote the reintroduction of the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, a bill aimed at opposing President Donald Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act in immigration enforcement. The bill did not pass.
Fox News Digital reported that Omar, reading from her notes, told reporters the "last time the Alien Enemies Act was invoked it was used to detain and deport German, Japanese, Italian immigrants during World War Eleven." She then caught herself and added, "Oh, two." The Minnesota Democrat had apparently read the Roman numeral "II" as the number eleven.
The clip resurfaced at a particularly inconvenient moment for Omar, who has spent recent weeks criticizing the Trump administration's handling of a widening federal fraud probe in Minnesota, even as she positioned herself as someone qualified to lecture on seriousness in government.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, shared a side-by-side video pairing Omar's gaffe with another clip of her calling Trump voters "idiots." Lee wrote: "'World War Eleven'... Yes, that was deadly."
Elon Musk posted a grimacing emoji in response. Conservative activist Chloe Cole wrote on X that she was "absolutely in awe of this clip of Ilhan Omar calling World War II 'World War Eleven.'"
Conservative podcast host Matt Walsh offered a sharper take on X:
"God forbid we ever have World War 3, Ilhan Omar will think we're on World War One Hundred Eleven."
The popular conservative account "I Meme Therefore I Am" tied the gaffe to the Minnesota fraud scandal, posting: "She must have gotten her education in the Quality Learing Center", a reference to a Minneapolis childcare facility at the center of the federal investigation. Cole made a similar connection, writing: "Truly quality learing. We're learing like we've never leared before."
What makes the clip sting is the contrast with Omar's own words about her political opponents. In a January interview with CBS News, Omar declared: "It's become really hard to have an intellectual debate with any of these people." She added that "the dumbing of the United States has arrived, because how else do we get a Trump presidency again?"
That kind of rhetoric, dismissing tens of millions of voters as too uninformed to govern themselves, looks different when the person delivering it can't read a Roman numeral off a notecard. Omar set the standard. The resurfaced clip measured her against it.
The congresswoman, the first Somali American member of Congress, has faced a string of controversies that extend well beyond a verbal slip. Her financial disclosures have drawn congressional scrutiny after a dramatic revision from $30 million to under $100,000.
Fox News Digital said it reached out to Omar for comment. No response was noted.
The resurfaced video gained traction at the same time federal investigators ramped up a fraud probe targeting largely Somali-owned businesses in Minnesota, including childcare facilities. Agents executed 22 search warrants on a recent Tuesday morning. Fox News reported that two of those raids were conducted at the Quality Learning Center and Baby Halimo Child Care, both in Minneapolis.
The Quality Learning Center was identified as being at the center of an alleged childcare fraud scandal in the state. The federal government's investigation has been expanding, and questions about what officials knew and when have followed Omar throughout.
Rather than supporting the investigation, Omar has been largely critical of how it has been conducted. In her January CBS News interview with Margaret Brennan, she said the Trump administration's approach "is harming my constituents, and it is creating the kind of chaos and confusion that no one needs in this moment."
She added that the administration's actions "creates the level of confusion and chaos that is not necessary in a moment when we are trying to deal with a serious problem that needs serious people to be able to address it."
Omar also said she wanted to "collaborately [sic] work with the administration to try to make sure that there is no fraud that's being perpetuated on our state." The mispronunciation, "collaborately" for "collaboratively", did not go unnoticed either.
Verbal mistakes happen to every public figure. A misread Roman numeral, taken alone, would be a minor embarrassment. But Omar has not treated her own errors with the grace she demands from others. She has called her political opponents incapable of "intellectual debate" and blamed a second Trump presidency on the country getting less informed.
That framing invites the comparison. And the comparison is not flattering.
The deeper issue is not whether Omar knows the difference between World War II and a fictional eleventh global conflict. It is the gap between her self-presentation as a serious policy voice and the accumulating record that undercuts it. She has faced a series of damaging developments that go far beyond gaffes, from the federal fraud investigation in her district to the financial disclosure questions that have drawn formal congressional attention.
Her office has insisted she is "not a millionaire" after the dramatic disclosure revision, but the explanations have raised more questions than they have answered.
Meanwhile, Omar described the federal raids in Minnesota as creating "the level of terror, of confusion, of chaos" without results. That characterization is hard to square with 22 search warrants executed at facilities suspected of fraud. Federal agents do not obtain 22 warrants to create confusion. They obtain them because a judge found probable cause, 22 times.
Omar wants to be taken seriously as a critic of the Trump administration's enforcement actions. She wants to be seen as a responsible partner in addressing fraud. She wants the public to believe she is the adult in the room.
But the record, from "World War Eleven" to "collaborately" to the broader controversies that continue to surface, tells a different story. And the internet, as it tends to do, is not letting her forget it.
When you spend your time telling the country it has gotten too uninformed, you had better know your Roman numerals.
