Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, repeated claims made by Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., portraying the late Charlie Kirk as racist and hostile toward people of color on the same day as his memorial service, which reportedly drew more than 200,000 attendees.
Crockett was among 58 Democrats who voted earlier this week against a House resolution honoring Kirk’s life and legacy. Opponents of the resolution have cited brief, edited clips of Kirk’s past remarks as justification for their votes.
Examples include a misrepresentation that Kirk questioned the intelligence of Black women, a selectively edited clip suggesting he endorsed gun deaths, and misleading quotes about religion. Conservative activists, including Amir Odom, have publicly debunked the claims, but they continue to be circulated by Kirk’s critics in Congress.
“So, meanwhile, you obviously feel very strongly about the rhetoric that Charlie Kirk used that you find objectionable and also from others in the MAGA movement. As the memorial service for him is going to happen later today, there is a debate over heated rhetoric on all sides,” CNN’s Dana Bash said to the congresswoman on Sunday’s edition of “State of the Union.”
“Whether it’s heated or not, the fact is Charlie Kirk should still be here. It should not have been that there was political violence that resulted because of the words that were coming out of his mouth, just like plenty of MAGA hates when I mentioned white supremacy, which kind of tells you where MAGA stands,” Crockett responded.
Bash then asked the congresswoman about a number of her own inflammatory statements, including ones in which she described President Trump as an “enemy” of the United States and compared him with Adolf Hitler.
“But do you have a responsibility as an elected official not to raise the temperature, but rather lower the temperature, particularly when there are people out there who listen to elected officials all over the place who are not well, who use that as a way to instigate the political violence that you are calling out?” Bash followed up.
Crockett — who has not criticized the Biden administration’s handling of social media censorship or its prosecution of an individual for posting a meme — declined to soften her rhetoric, instead reiterating comparisons between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler over what she described as “chilling speech” and “consolidating power.”
She also repeated several of the previously cited out-of-context quotes attributed to Kirk and defended her decision to vote against the resolution honoring him.
She went on to state that she had no obligation to honor Kirk after falsely accusing him of attacking “people of color” and her specifically. “One of the things I do wanna point out that’s not been laid out, honestly hurts my heart. When I saw the ‘no’ votes, there were only two caucasians. For the most part, the only people that voted no were people of color,” Crockett said.