House chairman Emanuel Cleaver dropped his gavel and walked off the House floor out of frustration after an argument broke out surrounding whether or not Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comments broke the rules and if they should be stricken from the record on Tuesday.
Cleaver explained that he was frustrated with the fact that every member of Congress who spoke on the floor about the pertinent resolution was in violation of the rules in an interview on CNN Wednesday morning.
“Frankly, I was embarrassed to remain as the chair presiding over what should have been a very shameful moment for all of us, and that is here we were in the House of Representatives, and every person who spoke violated the House rules,” he began. “So I admonished every single speaker, Democrat and Republican, and thought all I want to do is get through this ugly situation without adding any chaos to it.”
The resolution members of Congress were arguing about at the time aimed to condemn President Trump for telling four progressive freshmen congresswomen they should “go back” to their home countries if they weren’t happy with the state of the United States. The president has repeatedly reiterated these sentiments while Democrats and a handful of Republicans have admonished them.
Pelosi called the president’s tweets “racist,” and when Republican Rep. Doug Collins asked for the comments to be stricken from the record because they were a “personalist-based” attack on Trump, Cleaver obliged before walking off.
“Then, of course, the motion to take down the words of the speaker I thought were just a total disgrace because I could have set the stage to take down the words of other Republicans who had spoken, but I just wanted to get through it without embarrassing us anymore,” Cleaver continued. “The actual legislation, the title in the legislation, violated the rules. ‘Racist’ was in the title of the resolution. And then if you look at the footage, just about everybody who came up there said what Nancy Pelosi said.”
“What I’m trying to say is there were other individuals including Republicans whose words could have been taken down,” he added. “But my goal was this is ugly, embarrassing internationally, it’s embarrassing to our children, let’s just get through this. And we were about five minutes from getting through when someone decided to take down the words of the speaker.”
