Texas Democrat Rep Jasmine Crockett called Georgia Republican Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene “absolutely” racist after the Georgia congresswoman she made comments about her appearance during a House Oversight Committee hearing.
Ms Green mocked the Texans for her false eyelashes, prompting the Thursday night hearing to derail into chaos with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joining the confrontation.
“She is racist. I mean, I don’t have any questions about that. Because, I mean, I don’t know that she’s ever attacked her own colleagues,” Ms Crockett said, according to The Hill.
She went on to say that Ms Greene and Colorado Republican Rep Lauren Boebert “aren’t getting along. Boebert has clip-ins in her hair. And Boebert wears lashes, too, sometimes it looks like. I don’t know”.
“But she doesn’t attack her for any” of that, Ms Crockett said.
“She doesn’t do that, right? But she decided to do it to me,” she added, saying that Ms Greene is “absolutely” racist.
“She probably will raise money, because the racists are going to be so happy to give it to her,” Ms Crockett argued.
The hearing on Thursday night had been moved to 8pm to accommodate some Republicans who went to New York to back former President Donald Trump during his hush money trial.
It was scheduled to mark up the resolution to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for refusing to share audio from President Joe Biden’s interview with then-Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding his handling of classified documents. Mr Biden asserted executive privilege over the audio.
But the hearing was taken over by Ms Greene, her comments, and the ensuing sniping and flurry of insults.
“Please tell me what that has to do with Merrick Garland,” Ms Crockett asked during the hearing. “Do you know what we’re here for?”
“I don’t think you know what you’re here for,” Ms Greene said. “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”
Those comments prompted a discussion about whether to strike Ms Greene’s statements from the record, with New York Democratic AOC branding them as “disgusting,” telling Ms Greene to apologize.
“I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling,” Ms Crockett told Chair James Comer about Ms Greene’s jabs. “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?”
Ms Greene went on a social media rant on Friday morning, writing in part: “Pardon me if I don’t talk as nicely as some people would like to hear. I’m not going to keep you all addicted to outrage and hopium that never solves a problem or stops the inevitable implosion of the United States of America. I’m completely over it”.
Ms Boebert, at one point, voted with Democrats, backing a motion to censure Ms Greene’s comments.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez told the press on Friday, “It is not lost on me that Ms Greene targeted one of the only Black women on the committee for some of the most egregious and disgusting comments and with the expectation that it will be ignored,” according to Punchbowl News.
“You had a bunch of members who had skipped legislative votes yesterday in order to go to Donald Trump’s trial. There was drinking going on in the hearing room on the Republican side. I don’t even want to imagine how much drinking was taking place on the train or up in New York,” Maryland Democratic Rep Jamie Raskin said on Friday morning, according to The Hill. “And these members came back out of control. And the chairman did not rein them in, and the institution pays the price.”
“They skipped legislative votes in order to go to Trump’s trial and they came back jacked up on a lot of Trump-style animosity,” he added.
Republican Speaker Mike Johnson admitted that it wasn’t “a good look for Congress.”
Democratic California Rep Robert Garcia said, “I think there’s no question that Marjorie Taylor Greene uses racist language all the time ... she’s always ... coddling to white supremacists, she’s coddling to the language that Donald Trump uses. And so there’s no question that that’s the case.”
Arizona Republican Rep Andy Biggs said, “Things were said on both sides of the aisle that were not proper decorum.”
“Jasmine Crockett is a class act and she pushed back when she was pushed multiple times,” Mr Garcia said.
Democrat Greg Casar of Texas argued that Ms Greene was behind the fracas, adding that “at the end of the day, it’s Chairman Comer’s responsibility to try to maintain decorum in that room and he just couldn’t do it.”
The Independent has contacted the office of Ms Greene for comment.
