A pair of House Democrats accused far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Friday of making racist comments during a wild House Oversight Committee meeting the previous evening — even suggesting that alcohol may have been behind the “Jerry Springer”- style verbal throwdown.
“She’s racist,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) told reporters at the Capitol, hours after the Oversight panel’s business meeting got chaotic, with Greene (R-Ga.) taking shots at the black congresswoman for wearing “fake eyelashes.”
“I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” Greene said after Crockett asked the Georgia lawmaker if she knew why the committee was convened.
“I get attacked all the time on social media and it’s usually by millions of people that follow her and Trump,” Crockett said Friday. “When I say something that they don’t like … they say, ‘Oh well, look at her nails, look at her hair, it’s fake. Look at her eyelashes.’”
“That is them attacking me, really, as a black woman,” added the freshman Texan, noting that Greene’s ongoing spat with fellow GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado has never devolved into attacks on the latter’s appearance.
“Boebert has clip-ins in her hair, and Boebert wears lashes too sometimes, it looks like,” Crockett said, before suggesting Greene “probably will raise money” off of the verbal altercation “because the racists are going to be so happy to give it to her.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) lashed out Friday at Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) for joking on social media that the hearing was worse than an episode of the long-running daytime talk staple.
“In the past, I’ve described the U.S. [sic] House as The Jerry Springer Show,” Fetterman tweeted in earning Ocasio-Cortez’s wraith. “Today, I’m apologizing to The Jerry Springer Show.”
“I understand you likely would not have stood up for your colleague and seem to be confused about racism and misogyny being a ‘both sides’ issue,” the Bronx and Queens rep fired back on X. “But I stand up to bullies, instead of becoming one.”
“And to the women of Pennsylvania: I’d stand up for you too. Enjoy your Friday,” she added.
Neither Crockett nor Ocasio-Cortez would say for certain whether Greene’s attacks were fueled by booze — but both indicated that Republicans were drinking in the committee room from Solo cups.
“I had heard that there’s potentially alcohol involved. But I did not see any of that directly,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters about the late-night hearing. “I did see folks with open Solo cups in there.”
“I do know that every time we took a vote, the Republicans had been in the back on their side,” Crockett added, mentioning members “walking in and drinking in the committee.”
“I don’t know what they had over there,” she added. “We had tacos.”
Crockett got in a jab of her own Thursday night as Oversight chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) tried to restore order and allow a motion to strike Greene’s remarks from the record.
“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.
“A what now?” Comer said, perplexed. “I have no idea what you just said.”
Asked whether personal attacks would now be on the table in future Oversight hearings, Crockett told The Post, “If they can’t follow the rules, I will have to fight for myself.”
“It’s ridiculous that when you are insulted and when you have a chairman who doesn’t understand the rules, or doesn’t want to enforce the rules, that you’re expected to sit there and take it — I’m still a grown woman,” Crockett added. “One thing I’m not going to do is have somebody disrespect me as a duly elected official myself.”
“I think that we have someone who is not fit for Congress, that is currently serving, that does not adhere to the rules,” she added of Greene. “But in Oversight, there’s just no control. It’s just wild.”
A spokesman for Greene did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Oversight panel had met to hold a vote on a contempt of Congress resolution against Attorney General Merrick Garland over his failure to comply with a subpoena requesting recordings of President Biden’sinterview with special counsel Robert Hur.
That resolution, concerning Biden’s willful retention of classified documents after his vice presidency, passed along party lines and has been sent to the full House of Representatives for a vote.
