A tearful Rep. Rashida Tlaib could not hold back her emotions during a speech on the House floor on Thursday night during a Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-organized session of lawmakers sharing their thoughts about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, some of whom told of their own experiences of that day.
“I asked to go last,” Tlaib said, already choking up and unsuccessfully attempting to hold back tears, “because this is so personal.”
The Michigan Democratic congresswoman said that she is the frequent subject of death threats. Tlaib said she was notified of a death threat on her first day in Congress, in January 2019, before she had even been sworn in.
“More came later, uglier, more violent. One celebrating in writing the New Zealand massacre and hoping that more would come. Another mentioning my dear son Adam,” she paused, tears coming through, “mentioning him by name. Each one paralyzed me each time.”
Ocasio-Cortez went up to comfort and support Tlaib and placed her hand on Tlaib’s back as she continued her speech.
The firebrand New York congresswoman organized time on the House floor for members to share their thoughts and experiences about the Jan. 6 attack following her own long recollection of her experience in an Instagram livestream earlier this week. In that social media session, Ocasio-Cortez said that she thought she was going to die and revealed that she is a “survivor of sexual assault.” Ocasio-Cortez later got heavy criticism and accusations that she exaggerated her experience.
Tlaib said that she was not in the Capitol on Jan 6. during the breach. “All I could do is thank Allah that I wasn’t here.”
“The trauma from just being here, existing as a Muslim, it is so hard,” she said, adding that she worries about her staff. “I ask my colleagues to please try not to dehumanize what’s happening. This is real.”
‘On my very first day of orientation, I got my first death threat’: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib makes an emotional plea to take the January 6 Capitol attack seriously pic.twitter.com/297PIkZvlQ
— Reuters (@Reuters) February 5, 2021
Earlier, Ocasio-Cortez asserted in her own speech that the Jan. 6 attack was “violence deliberately incited by the president of the United States.”
“Some are demanding that we move on, or worse, attempting to minimize, discredit, or belittle the accounts of survivors,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “In doing so, they not only further harm those who were there that day, but they also send a tremendously damaged message to survivors of trauma.”
Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas asserted that “there were people dancing to music inside the White House watching the activities of the attack here.”
Missouri Democratic Rep. Cori Bush, who got her political start in the Black Lives Matter movement, said that Jan. 6 felt like being back at a protest “when the white supremacists would show up and start shooting at us.” She reiterated her call to expel members of Congress who objected to Electoral College results.
“We must have a deep dive, a deep investigation into what occurred,” said Democratic Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York. “Did any of our colleagues text, email, or tweet the whereabouts of Speaker Pelosi? Did anybody tweet or share information about the labyrinth of tunnels and hallways in this Capitol building? They seemed to know their way around.”
