Rep. Jasmine Crockett said she doesn’t regret hurling an insult back at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene at last week’s House hearing, saying she was only defending herself.
“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,” she told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” program Sunday.
Ms. Crockett, Texas Democrat, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, got into a spat at a House Oversight Committee hearing last week to decide whether Attorney General Merrick Garland would be held in contempt of Congress.
After Ms. Crockett asked a question, Ms. Greene said her “fake eyelashes” were making it hard for her to read.
The insult prompted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, to jump to Ms. Crockett’s defense, which started a lengthy back-and-forth among the three lawmakers.
Ms. Greene‘s “eyelash” comment was ultimately struck from the record, even after she refused to apologize.
SEE ALSO: Crockett launches ‘swag’ line featuring her comments about Greene
Ms. Crockett then hurled an insult.
“I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling,” Ms. Crockett asked Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican. “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. Crockett, a Black woman, accused Ms. Greene on Sunday of racism, saying that the White lawmaker’s comment was “her buying into that rhetoric” that Black women who wear fake eyelashes, nails or hair are acting “ghetto.”
“To me, this was her buying into that rhetoric and trying to amplify this for the MAGA crowd,” she said. “And so, yes, I absolutely think that she only did it to be racist towards me.”
Ms. Greene doubled down on her comment in an X post Friday.
“Some people are upset about the scene from the Oversight Committee last night. Well I’m upset and disgusted pretty much everyday at the Democrat controlled DOJ, federal government, and Congress in general,” Ms. Greene said. “Pardon me if I don’t talk as nicely as some people would like to hear.”
When asked Sunday why she thought Mr. Comer didn’t hold Ms. Greene “accountable” by, for example, removing her from the hearing, Ms. Crockett said it was because Republicans needed enough votes to hold Mr. Garland in contempt.
The whole exchange, which led to further responses and criticisms from other lawmakers, took up about an hour of the hearing.
Sen. John Fetterman offered up his opinion of the incident Friday, saying he wanted to apologize to an earlier era of “trash TV” because, in the past, he had compared it to the House.
“Today, I’m apologizing to The Jerry Springer Show,” the Pennsylvania Democrat wrote on X.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t having any of that.
She accused him of seeming “to be confused about racism and misogyny being a ‘both sides’ issue.”
“But I stand up to bullies, instead of becoming one,” she said. “And to the women of Pennsylvania: I’d stand up for you too. Enjoy your Friday.”
Mr. Fetterman defended himself on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, saying Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s comment was “absurd” and noted that Ms. Greene started the “chaos.”
But, he said, “if everyone on the committee was proud of what they’ve produced, they’re entitled to their opinion. Or if they feel that this is the kind of a video that you want to send to a classroom of eighth-grade civics students across America, that’s their choice,” he said.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, Maryland Democrat, said Friday that he thinks it’s “worth investigating” whether the lawmakers were under the influence during the hearing.
“I didn’t see the drinking, but the gentlelady from New Mexico, Melanie Stansbury, raised” that possibility, Mr. Raskin, the top Democrat on the committee, told Fox News. “She said there are members drinking in the room, and that’s something that is worth investigating if there was, in fact, drinking taking place.”