El Salvador president trolls Ilhan Omar after far-left ‘Squad’ member warned he was threatening ‘democratic values’ – despite his massive popularity after bringing down the murder rate by locking up cartel thugs
El Salvadoran voters will likely re-elect their current president Nayib Bukele, but not before he settles a banal internet feud with Squad member Ilhan Omar.
Bukele, who affectionately calls herself the “world’s coolest dictator,” exchanged words with the progressive lawmaker last week after she posted on X about “threats to democracy” in El Salvador.
The Central American leader, 42, has spent his time in power cleaning up his country’s crime scene and ensuring its famously high murder rate plummeted by locking up tens of thousands of violent gang members.
His tenure as head of state is likely to continue, largely thanks to an overhaul of the judiciary he led, in which he replaced judges with personal supporters who ruled he could run for a second term despite a previous constitutional ban on doing so.
Omar and others have criticized Bukele for endangering his country’s “democratic values” through his dramatic criminal imprisonment and re-election, which was previously deemed unconstitutional.
As such, Omar posted on the social media platform that she βled members of Congress in sending a letter to @SecBlinken urging action against threats to democracy in El Salvador.β
βThe State Department must review its relationship with El Salvador and defend democratic values. The Salvadoran people deserve free and fair elections without fear of repression.β
Omar is full letter was co-signed by a handful of equally progressive lawmakers, including Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro and Greg Casar, Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, California Rep. Barbara Lee, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin and DC Shadow Rep. Elenor Holmes Norton.
Bukele responded to Omar’s message with a message that has been viewed at least 8.5 million times:
βWe are HONORED to receive your attacks just days before OUR elections.
βI would be very concerned if we had your support. Thank you (prayer hands emoji),β he wrote.
A community note that appeared below Omar’s post said in part that Bukele won the country’s most recent elections in 2019 with a 54 percent majority and currently has a 91 percent approval rating because of his radical crackdown on gang violence.
In a video he posted on social media, Bukele told his country’s voters that “the opposition will be able to achieve its true and only plan, which is to free the gang members and use them to return to power.” if he is not elected. .
After his party came to power two years after his election to the national congress, Bukele introduced changes that essentially allowed him to declare war on the gangs in his country.
El Salvador, once called the “murder capital” of the world, became significantly safer when Bukele pushed gang members by the hundreds into the country’s massive prison system.
The country, which has declared itself the “safest in South America”, says murders fell by 94 percent after the gang raids began.
Team member Ilhan Omar posted on
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele responded wittily to Ilhan Omar’s criticism of his country’s democratic process
El Salvador now has the largest prison population per capita in the world
More than 75,000 suspected gangsters have been locked up by the Bukele government
Human rights groups have warned of overcrowding and ‘serious conditions’ at the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT)
Members of the MS-13 and 18 gangs remain in an overcrowded cell at the Quezaltepeque Prison in Quezaltepeque, El Salvador
In September, Bukele told the UN General Assembly: “We are no longer the death capital of the world and we have achieved this in record time.”
‘Today we are an example of safety and no one can doubt that. There are the results. They are irrefutable.’
The gang problem in El Salvador dates back to the civil war of the 1980s.
As Latin American refugees fled to America, the MS-13 and Calle 18 gangs formed on the streets of Los Angeles. When the war ended, the people of El Salvador returned to their homeland. They brought with them their gang ties, rivalries and violence.
Currently, Calle 18 is believed to have around 65,000 members worldwide, while MS-13 has between 50,000 and 70,000. As their numbers grew, their influence expanded.
Thousands of members of both groups have fought and died for the crown of Central America’s most powerful gang, profiting from crimes including sex and drug trafficking, racketeering, money laundering, racketeering and kidnapping.
Bukele. in an effort to address the problem, he has little time for his international critics, who criticize those who “said nothing when these criminals murdered dozens of Salvadoran men and women, but who jumped to attention when we started arresting them and said we were violating their rights.’
The energetic leader’s methods have been so successful and made him so popular that other South American countries, including Honduras and the Dominican Republic, with their own gang problems, are hoping to copy the model.