Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., suggested Sunday on a podcast that Democrats should act with grace toward former supporters of President Donald Trump who have broken with him on key issues.

Tommy Vietor, one of the co-hosts of “Pod Save America” played a clip of former Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was once one of Trump’s staunch allies, but has now become one of his most outspoken conservative critics to the point she suggested he be removed from office via the 25th Amendment after his viral threat to end Iranian civilization.

“The American people have to open their eyes and deal with reality and deal with truth. And the truth is, look, you may have supported President Trump for 10 years, like I did and like you have, but this is not the same man. This is not the same man that we supported,” Greene said earlier this month.

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Vietor noted that she is “far from the only die-hard MAGA supporter” who has broken with Trump over the war in Iran and the handling of the Epstein files, citing a variety of other famous political figures. He then proceeded to ask Omar things of what her reaction is to Greene’s comments and how Democrats overall should respond to such defections from the MAGA movement.

The answer to the latter part of his question, Omar said, is that “I think as Americans, it is really important for us to work together for the preservation of everything that is good in our country. and to support leaders that we can trust to safeguard what is good about our country.”

The fascinating part of such defectors like Greene, Omar suggested, is that “they are not just coming out like other ones that you’d mentioned where they’re saying, ‘This action is wrong,’ right? They’re saying, ‘I am done with you.’”

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Vietor agreed, noting it is a “values-based” judgment “like ‘this guy is bad,’ not like ‘this policy is bad.’”

“Right, and I think that we should give them credit for that, the fact that they’ve had this wake-up call to finally seeing this con man, this corrupt, chaotic man, for what he is,” Omar said. “The fact that they understand that he never really had any principles outside of uplifting his ego.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment. 

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She went on to say that instead, it was about Trump enriching himself and boosting his ego after having been mocked by people like former President Barack Obama in the past.

“It was never about putting America first. It was never about having coherent policies,” she said.

Omar went on to marvel at “The fact that they have gotten off the sycophant train and are saying you know ‘We trusted the wrong person we are sorry for that and need all of you to wake up to the fact that you’ve also trusted the wrong person.’”

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She added that this is something that “I think is an important thing for us to put our arms around and say ‘Yes, then now let’s figure out how do we save our country from the disaster that this man is creating.”

“I think it’s pretty important and meaningful that you feel that way, because you are someone who’s personally dealt with some abuse from a lot of these folks,” Vietor responded.

“All of them,” Omar joked.

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When she was asked whether she had ever called Greene to extend this olive branch, she said she hasn’t yet, but recalled “I did, before she left, I found her on the House floor and thanked her for, you know, her support in ending the genocide, her willingness to speak up about what the people in Gaza have experienced and what our tax dollars have allowed to take place.”

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She concluded, “We have a responsibility to end this genocide and to end our financial and political support for Israel and the impunity that we have constantly provided for them as, you know, they have tried to destroy a group of people.”

When Greene was in Congress, she and Omar often exchanged barbs towards on another.

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In early 2024, Greene had pushed to censure Omar, accusing her of being a “foreign agent” for Somalia.

In 2021, Omar voted with the Democratic majority to strip Greene of her committee assignments.

Omar spoke up in favor of penalizing Greene in personal terms. She mentioned how Greene tried to previously force her and Rashida Tlaib, two Muslim members of Congress, to retake their congressional oaths on the Bible. She recalled when Greene posted a picture of herself holding a gun alongside images of Omar, Tlaib and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, titled the “Squad’s worst nightmare.”

“This is about whether it is okay to hold an assault rifle next to Members’ heads in a campaign ad and incite death threats against them,” Omar said in response at the time. “This is about whether it is okay to encourage the murder of the Speaker of the House.”

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said he’s “torn” about efforts to remove the Iranian regime over concerns it would politically benefit President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I find myself, Michael, in a situation where I really want to see Iran defeated militarily,” Friedman told CNN host Michael Smerconish on Saturday. “Because this regime is a terrible regime for its people in the region.”

“And nothing would improve the region more than the replacement of this regime with the regime in Iran that was focused on enabling its people to realize their full potential and integrating peacefully with other countries and stop occupying Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. So, I’m all for that,” Friedman continued.

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Friedman then turned to what he calls the “problem” of a successful regime change in Tehran.

“The problem is I really don‘t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war because they are two awful human beings,” the Times columnist said. “They are both engaged in anti-democratic projects in their own countries. They‘re both alleged crooks. They are terrible, terrible people doing terrible things to America‘s standing in the world and Israel’s standing in the world.”

“And so I really find myself torn. I want to see Iran militarily defeated, but I do not want to see these two terrible people strengthened,” he added.

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The “torn” feelings from the New York Times columnist sparked a lot of attention among critics.

“What kind of sick hate must @tomfriedman have that he roots for USA to lose to a terrorist regime who has killed thousands of Americans?” Trump’s Israel Ambassador Mike Huckabee reacted.

“I didn’t vote for Obama but I praised him for taking out Bin Laden,” Huckabee added.

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“I commend @tomfriedman for his refreshing candor,” California Post opinion editor Joel Pollack wrote. “Yes, there are some Democrats who want America to lose militarily, so Trump and Netanyahu can’t ‘win’ politically. Trump isn’t running again and you can’t vote for/against Netanyahu. The left has no foreign policy, only domestic.”

“A perfect distillation of TDS,” Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume said.

Abdul El-Sayed’s refusal to distance himself from controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker has intensified claims that the Michigan Senate candidate is an extremist.

As El-Sayed’s campaign continues, Fox News Digital uncovered even more ties to radical socialist activists, such as a pro-Maduro organizer and other far-left figures, whose support is now becoming a political liability. 

For example, El-Sayed recently touted an endorsement from Tom Burke, the longtime executive leader of a group that hopes to build a new Communist Party in America and a publicly pro-Nicolas Maduro activist who regularly travels to Venezuela. He was just in New York protesting Maduro’s imprisonment on narco-terroism charges, visited Caracas in 2022 to attend the party convention of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the ruling party of Venezuela at the time led by Maduro, and, in 2020, he met with top officials from the country’s elections agency that has been accused of rigging elections under Maduro. 

Meanwhile, El-Sayed just held a fundraiser with Anas ‘Andy’ Shallal as well. Shallal has publicly praised Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Assata Shakur, of the Black Liberation Movement, who was convicted of killing a New Jersey State Trooper during a shootout with fellow activists. El-Sayed has also received donations from Marxisim expert Robert Meister and Brooklyn professor, Nancy Romer, who has lambasted the United States’ “savage capitalism.” 

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Fox News Digital reported last month that El-Sayed was among a slew of Michigan candidates and politicians who had received donations and were pictured with a radical Michigan-based Imam on his social media pages who eulogized and held formal events honoring the death of Ayatollah Khamenei after he was taken out by U.S. forces in February.

“Abdul El-Sayed cannot win a general election in Michigan, full stop,” a longtime Democratic strategist told Fox News Digital in response to this reporting. “This is a candidate who spent years calling police ‘standing armies we deploy against our own people,’ posted more than a dozen times in support of defunding the police, and then deleted his entire social media history the moment he decided to run statewide, hoping Michigan voters wouldn’t notice. They will notice. And so will Mike Rogers.”

As a gubernatorial candidate in Michigan in 2018, El-Sayed said that he “share[s] a lot of ideals” with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and, since 2019, El-Sayed has spoken at, or attended, at least five DSA-organized or sponsored events, according to public reporting and social media posts.

El-Sayed’s remarks came after he was asked whether he had sought out any endorsements from the country’s national socialist movement – DSA – while running for governor. El-Sayed responded that he doesn’t like labels but shares a lot of “ideals” with the group.

“We’ve had great conversations, and we share a lot of ideals, [but] I don’t like labels,” El-Sayed responded to the question. “I come from that world, where we pick our words very carefully and very thoughtfully. And I think that the term ‘socialism’ is too slippery of a word right now, and it evokes too many different things to too many different people.”

“I think for a millennial the word ‘socialism’ is spelled with a lower-case ‘s,’ and it implies an engagement of government in some of the most important aspects of our lives to ensure and address a level of equity that we have not had,” he continued. “And then, I think for people who are over the age of sixty, it implies a history that was some of the most fearful in their lives. And I think because it evokes different meanings politically, it’s just not a useful term.”

Last month, El-Sayed touted an endorsement from IATSE Local 26, with Burke quoted as the union president. Burke, a decades-long socialist leader, is the organizational secretary at the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which describes itself as aiming to start a new Communist Party in the United States. Burke has also proven himself to be a loyal supporter of Venezuela’s Maduro and his political party. Maduro was recently captured by the Trump administration and sent to court on narco-terrorism charges, which Burke has described as “disgraceful” acts by the military at Trump’s direction. 

Burke has slammed the U.S. efforts in Venezuela as amounting to the same sort of regime change efforts seen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Meanwhile, Burke travels to Venezuela frequently, according to publicly posted summaries and photos of his trips, including in 2022 when he attended the political convention for Maduro’s ruling party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, and in 2020, when he met with the president of Venezuela’s elections agency, which has been accused of interfering in the country’s elections. 

Burke can be seen in photos alongside other individuals who met with the Maduro-backing Bolivarian Militia, and photos Fox News could not independently verify showed Burke at a 2020 protest in Caracas next to Bolivarian militiamen that involved both pro-government and anti-government forces and ultimately became violent. 

Despite Maduro’s fall from grace and praise following his departure, Burke said during a radio interview in 2023 that Maduro was “very popular with people.”

“We want social change that builds upon the civil rights movement and the women’s liberation movement, the LGBTQ movements of the 70s and 80s, and especially the labor movement,” Burke recently said in an interview with Fight Back! Radio several weeks ago. “We want to build up those movements to create a new society from the ashes of the one that the billionaires are destroying.”

El-Sayed also campaigned just recently alongside Shallal, a wealthy Iraqi-American business owner and entrepreneur, according to a web page advertising the event that included a domain belonging to the Democratic Party’s ActBlue fundraising arm. Shallal has praised and commemorated radical far-left individuals, like communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro and radical American activist Assata Shakur, known for killing a state trooper in a gunfight with other activists, being sentenced to life, and then fleeing to Cuba.

“Fidel Castro was a bigger than life figure whose impact reached far beyond his beloved country, Cuba,” he wrote on Instagram in November. In February, Shallal also posted a letter from American activist Alice Walker praising Castro. Shallal visited the Cuban embassy as recently as last year, posting about it on social media in front of a statue at the embassy of Cuban political figure Jose Marti. 

In addition to Burke and Shallal, El-Sayed accepted support from radical socialist professor Nancy Romer and Marxism philosopher Robert Meister, who both have donated to his campaign. 

Romer has lambasted America’s “savage capitalism,” and claims she helped bring about a statewide Michigan chapter of the Human Rights Party decades ago, which historical reports show was often far-left of traditional Democrats and circumvented orthodox Democratic Party priorities. 

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Meister, who has donated thousands to El-Sayed, is a Marxism expert who has posited that the Soviet Empire helped prevent anti-Imperialist movements from being squelched during the Cold War era and has written books on how to apply Marxism in the current political environment. Meister previously served as director of The Bruce Initiative on Rethinking Capitalism, and his published works include “Political Identity: Thinking Through Marx” and “Critique Of The Global Discourse Of Humanitarian That Followed The Fall Of Communism.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the Michigan Senate candidate about his comments and his ties to publicly avowed socialists, other radicals and their ideals, but did not receive a response. 

However, according to Republican strategists who spoke with Fox News Digital, whether El-Sayed calls himself a socialist or not, Democrats running against him should be aware of the company he keeps and use it to their advantage. Fox News Digital reported last month that El-Sayed accepted money as a political candidate and has been seen as recently as 2023 rubbing elbows with Michigan-based Muslim Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, who complained in a eulogy following Khamanei’s death that the Iranian Supreme Leader was killed by “the most wretched hands on Earth.”

Ali Elahi, whose social media pages were a who’s who of Michigan and national level Democratic politicians until the photos were deleted after Fox News Digital inquired about the connections, showed him regularly meeting with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and the Imam also showed himself taking trips to Iran as well. 

At the latest gathering on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, pictures from the meeting showed it was also attended by the co-founder of the left-wing activist group CODEPINK, which has been accused of having close ties to China, and former U.S. intelligence official and U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, whose house was raided by the FBI for what Ritter himself described as violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. 

“Abdul El-Sayed is campaigning with, and for, extremists. If his recent comments weren’t bad enough, El-Sayed’s ties to the DSA, Maduro cronies, and Iranian regime sympathizers check all the boxes of radical leftism that has become all too commonplace in the Democrat Party,” said Jessica Anderson, President of the conservative Sentinel Action Fund. “Michiganders are tired of the chaos and extremism. That’s why we see support growing for commonsense leaders like Mike Rogers.”

While El-Sayed did not respond to Fox News Digital’s inquiries, he did go on Fox News channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” during which anchor Bill Hemmer pressed him on his plans to hold a campaign event with controversial, communist-sympathizing podcaster Hasan Piker. Hemmer also gave El-Sayed a chance to respond to criticism about his comments, suggesting he was worried about upsetting people “sad” about the Iranian Supreme Leader’s death at the hands of U.S. military forces with any statement about the matter. El-Sayed said in the recording he preferred to stay silent about it.

“I just want to remind you that most people in the city of Dearborn and Dearborn Heights are not Arab-American. They are white. And they’re worried, just like I am, they’re saddened by the fact that their tax prices go up and they are watching their gas prices go up with it all to fight a war that we shouldn’t really be a part of,” El-Sayed said, trashing the war as “illegal,” “immoral” and described what was going on in Iran as a “regime change war.”

Hemmer also gave El-Sayed a chance to respond to his decision to campaign with Piker, which has earned him immense criticism. Piker has been slammed for justifying Hamas’ attacks and slaughter, including rapes, on innocent Israelis, was forced to walk back comments about how Americans deserved 9/11, and recently told his followers that “you really don’t need suicide bombing anymore,” because cheap Chinese-made drones can be bought online for anyone who is interested in performing a terror strike.

Piker sympathizes with communist ideals, but has labeled himself a socialist and Marxist while rejecting communist labels. However, Piker has also described communism as the “honorable end goal” of socialism.

“It’s an active decision to reach out to people who feel locked out of their politics to have a conversation, just like I’m making an active decision as somebody who is running in the Democratic primary to have a conversation on Fox News,” El-Sayed said of his decision to campaign with Piker. “Just because you invite somebody to campaign with you, or you’re engaging with them, does not mean that you agree with them.”

Long-time GOP strategist Collin Reed agreed with other sources Fox News spoke to who said that, even though El-Sayed may be brushing off his ties to radical folks, if other Democrats in the upcoming primary want to win they should be zeroing in on his affiliations. 

“Welcoming the support from open and avowed socialist sympathizers will no doubt make Mr. El-Sayed the belle of the ball at No Kings rallies and other left-wing resistance movements, but it’s a tough sell in a battleground state like Michigan,” Reed said. “You are the company you keep, and the other Democrats competing in this primary would be wise to use these revelations to disqualify Mr. El-Sayed in the eyes of their voters. If they don’t, it will be another sign that the tail is wagging the dog and the far left driving the debate in these primary contests, which is poised to shape the overall contours of the midterm elections.”