Following an iconic career, which included six major championships, golfer Phil Mickelson has become a lightning rod for his political opinions.
On Saturday, Mickelson, who currently golfs on the LIV Tour, responded to what he calls “hate” from Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who Mickelson feels insulted the memory of recently slain political commentator Charlie Kirk.
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“Ilhan spews hate every time she opens her mouth, she came here fraudulently and will hopefully be sent back to Somalia soon,” Mickelson wrote on X Saturday.
The golfer was angered by comments Omar made during a recent appearance on CNN:
“What I find jarring,” Omar told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “is that there’s so many people willing to excuse the most reprehensible things that he said, that they agree with that, that they’re willing to have monuments for him, that they want to create a day to honor him, and that they want to produce resolutions in the house of Congress honoring his life and legacy.”
Kirk was shot and killed Sept. 10 at a Utah college event in what Gov. Spencer Cox called a political assassination carried out from a rooftop.
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He was remembered at a funeral service on Sunday, which was attended by President Donald Trump.
“I am not going to sit here and be judged for not wanting to honor any legacy this man has left behind, that should be in the dustbin of history, and we should hopefully move on and forget the hate that he spewed every single day,” Omar said.
Kirk became recognized as one of the most prominent voices of the MAGA movement, and his death has served as a rallying cry for the Republican Party. However, Kirk’s critics saw the conservative influencer as divisive, racist and xenophobic.
Meanwhile, Omar is a member of the Democratic Party who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district since 2019. As one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, she is known as a leading progressive voice, a member of “The Squad,” and a frequent target of conservative criticism.
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