Source: Arturo Holmes / Getty
Texas representative Jasmine Crockett has been outspoken about her issues with the Trump administration and nothing has changed after right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk‘s fatal shooting in Utah.
The 44-year-old Democratic congresswoman appeared on The Breakfast Club on Friday, calling out the Republican party for placing the blame for Kirk’s shooting at a speaking event at Utah Valley University directly on Democrats. South Carolina representative Nancy Mace was particularly passionate after the shooting, saying in a viral interview that “Democrats need to own this,” before finding out that the accused shooter, Tyler Robinson, was raised in a conservative Utah family.
Crockett discussed a range of topics during her latest appearance, one of several she’s made on the popular radio show and podcast. Kirk, 31, co-founded Turning Point USA at the age of 18, an organization that advocates for conservative viewpoints on high school and college campuses. He was a Trump supporter who helped generate votes for Trump’s presidential campaigns. His appearance was one of many events he hosted on college campuses, where he debated students on various hot-button issues. But many believed him to be racist, misogynistic and homophobic, based on his own words during those debates and on his self-titled podcast.
“We do have free speech in this country, but are you free to say just any and everything?” Crockett asked. “There are limits to all of our constitutional protections, as well as what kind of standard are we going to hold ourselves to, when you are sitting, say, in the Oval Office? When you’re literally telling people at rallies, ‘Yeah, beat them up’ and that kind of stuff, you are promoting a culture of violence.”
Crockett is facing the possibility of having to run for a seat in a newly redrawn district after President Trump ordered changes in the Texas congressional map. Yet it hasn’t stopped her from continuing to be one of the few Democratic politicians who has maintained her criticism of Trump and his allies. She says that blaming Kirk’s death on Democrats without proof continues the heightened and divisive rhetoric that Republicans have championed.
“I hate that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle immediately came out and they were like, ‘Oh, you know, this is on the Democrats.’ Like, we don’t even know who did what. It’s wild that Republicans are presuming that this is somebody that came from our side of the aisle.”
She continued, “Obviously, the first thing that anybody would say—and you didn’t have any Democrat that went out there and said otherwise—is, ‘We’re denouncing political violence.”
As it turns out, Robinson, Kirk’s 22-year-old accused killer, was turned in by his family after he reportedly confessed to the crime. He is white, male, and was raised in what is being reported as a conservative family. Robinson is not cooperating with police, and his motive remains unknown, though he appears to have been heavily influenced by gaming culture. Robinson is said to have disliked Kirk for reasons unknown. However, Kirk had anti-transgender views and law enforcement says that Robinson’s roommate and alleged romantic partner was a “male in the process of transitioning.”
Crockett says that it just proves that we need to come to terms with the fact that radical extremists are behind a lot of the gun violence in America, from mass shootings to the kind of political violence that led to Kirk losing his life.
“The vast majority of these shootings, whether they are seen as political or not, if we look at the numbers, – white supremacy ideology, Crockett said. “But we don’t want to do anything about that.”
See social media’s reaction to Crockett’s statements below.
