U.S. Representatives Jasmine Crockett and Marjorie Taylor-Greene may be colleagues, but they are not friends.
On Thursday, May 16, the House Oversight Committee met to markup a resolution holding U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt or refusing to turn over an audio recording of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. However, the meeting quickly went of the rails when Taylor-Greene asked, “I’d like to know if any Democrats on the committee are employing Judge [Juan] Merchan’s daughter?” Greene’s question, referring to the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial, prompted Crockett to answer with a question of her own.
“Please tell me what that has to do with Merrick Garland?” Crockett asked.
“I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” Taylor Greene answered.
After hearing Taylor-Greene’s comment about Crockett, U.S. Representatives Jamie Raskin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked to have her comments removed from the record. Ultimately, the motion failed, Taylor-Greene refused to apologize and Crockett hopped in with a counter of her own.
“I’m just curious. To better understand your ruling, if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleached-blonde, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?” Crockett asked.
Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna attempted to have Crockett’s comments struck from the record as well, inviting another response from the congresswoman.
“I’m trying to get clarification,” Crockett continued.
“Don’t tell me to calm down, because y’all talk noise and then you can’t take it, because if I come and talk s—t about her, y’all gonna have a problem.”
In a later interview with Abby Phillip of CNN, Crockett doubled down on her response to Taylor-Greene, calling her comments racist.
“A lot of times when I would go viral, instead of [MAGA America] trying to address the things that I laid out in a very factual way, what they would try to do is say, ‘Oh, look at her hair,’ or ‘Look at her nails,’ or ‘Look at her lashes,’ and they would all then associate anything I do as a form of beautification with being quote-unquote ghetto,” she explained.
“I am not the only woman in Congress that wears lashes, and there are women on her side of the aisle that wear lashes as well, as well as hair extensions. But she’s never felt like that was a dig that she needed to take at anyone except for me, a Black woman who sits on the committee.”
Taylor-Greene also issued additional comments, call her initial statements “facts.”
“Every single committee hearing. Every single floor speech. Democrats attack, smear, and hurl personal insults against President Trump. Just like Jamie Raskin did in his opening statement last night. How ridiculous is it that the Speaker runs his mouth about decorum when our opposition refuses to follow it at all,” she stated.
“AOC isn’t intelligent. Jasmine Crockett has fake eyelashes. These aren’t attacks on personalities. These are just facts.”
Moving forward, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he hopes his colleagues will “control [their] emotions better and get the job done.”
“I think the decorum in the House is an important tradition to maintain,” Johnson said.
“So we’ll be talking about that with our members. I think Hakeem Jeffries needs to do the same on the Democrat side.”
