Rep. Jasmine Crockett has zero regrets about her heated exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene during a House committee hearing last week, telling CNN that Greene’s insult about Crockett’s appearance was “absolutely” racist.
“Do you think her going after your eyelashes, that that, in itself, is racist?” State of the Union host Jake Tapper asked Crockett on Sunday.
“I think her specifically doing it to me, yes, that was the intent,” Crockett said. “Women wear makeup, we wear lashes, we wear all types of things to beautify ourselves. But MAGA has historically been on social media doing the things where they’re saying, ‘Oh, she’s black with lashes and nails and hair, and so she’s ghetto.’ And so, to me, this was her buying into that rhetoric and trying to amplify this for the MAGA crowd. And so, yes, I absolutely think that she only did it to be racist towards me.”
“It is buying into a racist trope,” Crockett added. “But the reality is that women of all colors wear lashes.”
The confrontation occurred in a House Oversight Committee meeting Thursday where members were voting whether to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to give Republicans audio recordings of President Joe Biden being interviewed by special counsel Robert Hur.
During the hearing, Greene went off topic, demanding to know if any Democrats were working with the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over Trump’s ongoing criminal trial.
“Please tell me what that has to do with Merrick Garland. Do you know what we’re here for? You know we’re here about AG Garland?” Crockett asked Greene.
Greene snarked that Crockett’s “fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”
Democrats — including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — jumped to Crockett’s defense and demanded that Greene’s comments be stricken, but Republicans voted to keep the comments on the congressional record.
That’s when Crockett jumped in, asking a hypothetical question of Republican Committee Chair James Comer that included a indirect burn against Greene. “I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling,” Crockett said. “If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde, bad built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”
On CNN, Crockett accused Republicans of refusing to punish Greene for insulting her because Comer was worried he wouldn’t have enough votes to move the contempt motion forward without the Georgia congresswoman.
“The source of the chaos is always Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Crockett said Sunday.
When Tapper asked Crockett whether she regretted her comments, she was clear that she does not. “I don’t, because here’s the thing. I signed up to be a member of Congress. That didn’t mean that I was supposed to walk into a position where I’m going to walk in and be disrespected,” Crockett said.
“It’s already a hostile work environment being there, and we do have rules,” she continued. “The problem with MAGA is that MAGA does not respect rules, nor do they respect the law. That is exactly why they’re all running up to Trump’s trial, because he’s in trouble not because of some big conspiracy by the Biden administration. He’s in trouble because he fails to respect the law.”
Crockett also pointed out that she did not specifically name Greene in her attack. She said she was looking to understand the rules of the committee and what Comer would and would not allow.
“So what are the parameters? And I generally wanted to know,” Crockett said. “So I did not state anything to her. I specifically asked a question. And I didn’t even mention her name. It was for clarification, and that’s what I asked for. And he obviously didn’t hear me.”
“Yes, and I hear that,” Tapper said. “But she went after your appearance… You went back at her 1,000-fold.”
“I did,” Crockett said, “in a very lawyerly way.”
