A Florida city commissioner is facing calls to resign this week after saying Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a Muslim, might “blow up Capitol Hill.”
Hallandale Beach Commissioner Annabelle Lima-Taub made the Islamophobic remarks in a Facebook post on Jan. 8 in which she shared a link to an online petition seeking to remove Tlaib from Congress for urging Democrats to go after President Donald Trump and “impeach the motherfucker.”
“Proudly signed,” Lima-Taub wrote in the post, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “A Hamas-loving anti-Semite has NO place in government! She is a danger and [I] would not put it past her to become a martyr and blow up Capitol Hill.”
The Facebook post was deleted after the paper reached out for comment, the Sun-Sentinel reported Monday. Lima-Taub has not publicly addressed the post. She did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Tlaib condemned Lima-Taub’s comments on Tuesday, blaming Trump and Republicans for creating an environment in which bigotry can thrive.
“This sort of hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” Tlaib tweeted. “This President embraced it and Republicans have happily gone along with it.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on Lima-Taub to resign.
“Xenophobic stereotypes must not be embraced by any elected official,” CAIR-Florida’s communications director, Wilfredo Ruiz, said in a statement. “Her un-American, xenophobic statements establish that she is unfit to hold the Commissioner’s seat. She must apologize immediately and follow up that apology with her resignation.”
The Israeli-born Lima-Taub was elected to the commission in November 2016 after running on a platform of “restoring ethics to city hall” and “promoting public safety,” according to her profile on the commission’s website.
Several other Hallandale Beach commissioners have spoken out against her comments, the Sun-Sentinel reported.
“Commissioner Lima-Taub’s behavior is indefensible and a black eye for Hallandale Beach,” Commissioner Michele Lazarow told the newspaper.
In November, Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) became the first Muslim women elected to Congress. They faced Islamophobic attacks on the campaign trail, including an “alt-right” activist heckling them during a town hall in August and falsely accusing them of being “jihadi.”