Rep. Jasmine Crockett Says She's Ready For 'Hand-To-Hand Combat All The Time'

Crockett is one of multiple first-term Democrats on the House oversight committee who are turning the tables on pugnacious Republicans.

WASHINGTON — The confrontation between Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) at a House oversight committee hearing Thursday may have been inevitable.

Since arriving in Congress in 2023, Crockett has been one of the committee’s most vocal Democrats. And Greene has been Greene, offering her trademark stream of inflammatory behavior, including a “fake eyelashes” jab at Crockett last week, to which the Democrat responded with her now-infamous clapback about Greene’s “bleach-blond, bad-built, butch body.”

For Democrats, especially newer members of the House oversight committee, Thursday’s hearing seems to have vindicated their strategy of aggressively mocking Republicans. Greene went personal, Crockett responded, and the chaos overshadowed the GOP-led committee’s push for criminal contempt charges against the U.S. attorney general, with even House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) shaking his head at the proceedings. It was just the latest episode of what some have termed “failure theater” for House oversight committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.).

“It is a committee where you got to stay on top of your toes and be ready for some nonsense,” Crockett told HuffPost. “I didn’t think that I’d have to be ready for being attacked for my lashes in committee, but it is that type of committee where it is hand-to-hand combat all the time.”

The daily combat is a strategy, Crockett said. “We always look at it like we’re the truth-tellers, and we’re on the front lines of democracy because these are the people, they spread all the misinformation and disinformation and the Russian propaganda,” she said.