Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., “apologized” Wednesday after she accused Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., of being racist for using an African-American woman as a “prop” to prove that President Trump is not racist, but she nevertheless suggested Meadows had committed a “racist act.”
Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress, came under fire earlier this year after she said during an event the House is “going to impeach the motherfucker,” in reference to Trump.
What Tlaib cast as an apology came after she and Meadows sparred over a statement she made her during questioning of Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime attorney and former “fixer,” who testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“Just to make a note, Mr. Chairman, just because someone has a person of color, a black person, working for them does not mean they aren’t racist,” Tlaib said. “It is insensitive, the fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman, in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself.”
Watch the exchange:
.@RashidaTlaib says that a member of the committee using a black woman as a “prop” to demonstrate Trump is not racist “in of itself is racist.” @MarkMeadows asked chair @RepCummings to strike Tlaib’s comments from the record.
The exchange got heated and Cummings stepped in. pic.twitter.com/G9riYTxm0U
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) February 27, 2019
Tlaib was referring to an instance earlier in the hearing when Lynne Patton, a former employee of the Trump Organization and current official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, appeared behind Meadows as he sought to repudiate Cohen’s allegation that Trump was racist.
Tlaib later claimed that she did not intend to call Meadows a racist but said his decision to have Patton stand before lawmakers to make a point was “a racist act.”
“To my colleague, Mr. Meadows, that was not my intention. I do apologize if that’s what it sounded like,” she said. “But I said ‘someone’ in general. As everybody knows in this chamber, I’m pretty direct, so if I wanted to say that I would have but that’s not what I said.”
“I was not referring to you at all as a racist,” Tlaib added.
The comments from the Michigan Democrat prompted fierce and emotional pushback from Meadows, who said “to even go this direction is wrong.”
“My nieces and nephews are people of color. Not many people know that. You know that Mr. Chairman,” he told Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., who leads the committee. “To indicate that I asked someone who is a personal friend of the Trump family, who has worked for him, who knows this particular individual, that she’s coming in to be a prop, it is racist to suggest that I ask her to come in here for that reason.”
[Related: Trump associate, accused by Rashida Tlaib of being a ‘prop,’ hits back after Michael Cohen hearing]
