GOP Florida congressman thinks Boebert should keep committee assignments - "The Takeout"
CBSN
After Democratic members of Congress called for GOP Congresswoman Lauren Boebert to be removed from her committee assignments after making anti-Muslim remarks recently, fellow Republican Congressman Byron Donalds disagreed. Donalds on the legacy of Sen. Bob Dole: "I mean, the first thing is just his sacrifice for the country. Most people don't know Bob Dole like basically enlisted right away, obviously after what happened at Pearl Harbor. Enlisted right away, gave his life to this country, served with tremendous honor. It didn't really matter what his politics was, the fact that he decided that he was going to devote his entire life to the United States. And this is not just about running for president three times. This is about all his time here in Congress, his time actually on the battlefield. This is a man who, you know, frankly, his body was badly damaged and still continued. There was a purpose behind everything he wanted to do." Lauren Boebert and anti-Muslim slurs against Rep. Ilhan Omar: "I don't agree with that at all. Listen, I think you know what Lauren said with respect to Ilhan Omar, she shouldn't have said it. I wouldn't have said it. But that being said, what Nancy Pelosi has allowed this Congress where essentially the Speaker can decide who's going to be off of committees. Let's be honest, it's not the rank-and-file Democrats, it's the speaker that's making this decision. I think it's wrong. The history in this body has been that each party basically allows people to sit on committees and puts them on those committees... the parties decide that, not the opposition party... I think it's a bad precedent." Should Kevin McCarthy should be speaker of the House in 2022 if House GOP take the majority? "I think he should... Kevin has led us. He's done tremendous things with everything that's going on here. He led us before I got here. So right now, the question is, who's going to be the person that's going to take us to the next level? Kevin's proven he can do that. Now what we need to do going forward is making sure that we actually have an agenda and we are working towards that agenda. And we're demonstrating to the American people what Republican ideals are, what conservative ideals are and what that actually will do for the United States, for its people and for the next wave of Americans to come." Joining the Congressional Black Caucus as a Republican? "I believe that there are large segments of the Black community that are actually quite conservative. They may not vote that way in terms of Republican or Democrat, but in their lives they are actually very conservative. And I think it's important to bring those conservative ideals to the floor and have those discussions in the CBC... I think it's about having somebody in the room who shares the ideas from a different political perspective who still wants Black America, quote unquote, to succeed and be successful, which is exactly what I want." January 6 Capitol attack: "It's absolutely was a riot and it was heinous and it was disgusting. Something that never should happen in our country at all. I get it. People are upset about elections, upset about what happened. That does not give you the right to breach a federal building in our country."
"I don't agree with that at all," the freshman Republican from Florida told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett on "The Takeout" podcast this week. "She shouldn't have said it. I wouldn't have said it."
Donalds argued that punishing Boebert would break precedent in Congress. "The history in this body has been that each party basically allows people to sit on committees and puts them on those committees... the parties decide that, not the opposition party."
Rodeo star Spencer Wright and his wife are making end-of-life preparations for their 3-year-old son after he was found unconscious in a creek, a close family friend said in updates posted on social media and confirmed to CBS affiliate KUTV. The boy had been playing on his tractor before he ended up in the water and a mile downstream.
The launch of Boeing's star-crossed Starliner spacecraft on its first piloted test flight is slipping to at least June 1 to give engineers more time to assess a small-but-persistent helium leak in the capsule's propulsion system, and its potential impact across all phases of flight, NASA announced Wednesday.
Washington — As former President Donald Trump's "hush money" criminal trial in New York proceeds to closing arguments next week, the legal focus is moving south. His attorneys and longtime aide Walt Nauta appeared before Florida federal Judge Aileen Cannon, where they sparred with prosecutors during two contentious, day-long hearings on Wednesday.