The Trump associate who was the subject of a heated exchange during the Michael Cohen hearing on Wednesday is hitting back against accusations that was being used as a “prop.”
Lynne Patton, an African-American official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and a personal friend of the president, was at the center of fiery back-and-forth between Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. The Michigan lawmaker suggested Patton’s presence in the room in defense of Trump was a racist ploy by Meadows.
“Today a race card was played. But not by Congressman Mark Meadows. But rather by those on the House Oversight Committee who sadly placed more credence on the word of a self-confessed convicted perjurer, than that of a highly-educated black woman who rose up the ranks of one of the most recognized global real-estate companies in the world, spoke before 25 million people at the Republican National Convention and now successfully oversees the largest HUD program office in the country,” Patton said on social media Wednesday.
“That is not the resume of a prop,” she continued.
During his allotted time, Meadows told Cohen, who had accused Trump of being a racist, that someone like Patton would not be serving in the administration if his allegations against Trump were true.
Patton was invited by Meadows to attend the hearing.
Tlaib ultimately gave Meadows an apology after she railed against the “racist” use of “a prop, a black woman, in this chamber” after intervention from Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md. Tlaib it was not her intention to cast Meadows as a racist, but remained steadfast in that using an African-American as a prop is racist.
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
