In newly surfaced video, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar stands before a crowd of Somali Americans, grabs an American flag, and waves an upside down flap on purpose. All this while looking at a crowd of thousands also waving an inverted flag.
The newly unearthed video shows Senator Klobuchar addressing the crowd in the Somali language before switching to English: "As you know, we are home to the largest Somali population in the United States, and we are so proud of that fact in Minnesota!" She followed up with a pledge — "We have much to do, but we are continuing to fight for you."
An upside-down American flag is a recognized signal of disdain — a nation in crisis. It's also, when waved by a sitting U.S. senator at an ethnic minority rally, something else entirely. It's a visual statement about what the immigrants to the U.S. think about their adopted country versus their native land.
The footage is roughly ten years old, which means Klobuchar has been in the Senate this entire time without anyone in mainstream media thinking this was newsworthy. This is important info because we all remember what happened when an upside-down flag appeared at Justice Samuel Alito's private residence. The New York Times ran multiple stories. Democrats demanded Alito recuse himself from cases. Cable news treated it like a constitutional emergency.
Alito's flag was at his house. Klobuchar's was in her hand, in front of a crowd on non-native Americans.
The Alito story generated weeks of coverage. Editorials about the erosion of judicial norms. Calls for ethics investigations. Congressional Democrats used it as ammunition to question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court itself. A flag at a private home, which Alito said his wife had hung during a neighborhood dispute, became a national scandal.
Klobuchar held one up and waved it to a cheering crowd.
You can see Klobuchar's behavior for yourself at the Somali rally here
This is the double standard that doesn't need explaining anymore. A conservative justice's wife hangs a flag upside down on their own property and it's evidence of insurrection sympathies. A Democratic senator does it on camera while pandering to a non-native crows and it's a cultural celebration. The rules are perfectly clear — they just don't apply evenly.
Klobuchar told that crowd she was fighting for them. The flag in her hand suggested she wasn't fighting under the same banner as the rest of us.
Ten years. Not one question.