Rand Paul
Rand PaulReuters

Republican Senator Paul Rand (KY) offered to buy a plane ticket for the "ungrateful" Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN) to visit her birth country of Somalia to help increase her appreciation for the United States. Omar's family fled Somalia amidst a civil war in the 1990s, when Omar was a child, and received asylum in the US.

"Well, she came here and we fed her, we clothed her, she got welfare, she got [schooling], she got healthcare, and then, lo and behold, she has the honor of actually winning a seat in Congress, and she says we’re a terrible country?" Rand said about Omar. "I think that’s about as ungrateful as you can get."

"And so—I’m willing to contribute to buy her a ticket to go visit Somalia… and I think she can look and maybe learn a little bit about the disaster that is Somalia—that has no capitalism, has no God-given rights guaranteed in a constitution, and has about seven different tribes that have been fighting each other for the last 40 years. And then maybe after she’s visited Somalia for a while, she might come back and appreciate America more.”

Paul made his remarks to Breitbart News last week at Turning Point USA, a conservative youth summit in Washington. His remarks were made in light of the controversy surrounding Trump's tweets two weeks ago, telling "the Squad," a group of freshmen Democratic congresswomen, to "go back" to the countries they came from.

The four rookie politicians, all women of color - Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) -.were all born in the US except for Omar. Trump wrote that the women should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came."

A few days later at a campaign rally in North Carolina, Trump attacked the congresswomen again, especially Omar, and the crowd reacted by chanting "send her back." Following widespread outrage over the chants, Trump said he did not agree with the crowd at his rally.

Omar is actually planning on traveling to Israel next month, a country she routinely attacks, rather than her native country of Somalia.