Rep. Chip Roy rushed to Sen. Ted Cruz’s defense in jumping into a public exchange of jabs between his fellow Texan and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The Republican congressman from Texas sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanding that the firebrand New York Democrat apologize to Cruz or “we will be forced to find alternative means to condemn this regrettable statement.”
Ocasio-Cortez and Cruz appeared to put on a united front on Thursday in expressing their outrage at trading app Robinhood after it took the highly unusual step of curbing trading in GameStop and another stock whose price has increased exponentially, AMC Entertainment Holdings. Ocasio-Cortez voiced support for a hearing on the matter, and Cruz responded with a tweet that said, “Fully agree.”
The New York congresswoman, though, made clear that she is not interested in working with Cruz due to his objection to certifying the Electoral College results, which she blames for encouraging or sparking the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
“I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out. Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed. In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign,” she tweeted.
The accusation of murder crossed a line for Roy, who publicly opposed moves by his Republican colleague to object to electors and attempted to expose hypocrisy in the move through a parliamentary procedure before Jan. 6.
“It has come to my attention that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sent out a tweet a few hours ago in which she accused Senator Ted Cruz, in essence, of attempted murder,” Roy said in his late Thursday letter.
“As a member of this body who disagreed with ‘objections’ to the electors and who has expressed publicly my concerns about the events leading to January 6th, it is completely unacceptable behavior for a Member of Congress to make this kind of scurrilous charge against another member in the House or Senate for simply engaging in speech and debate regarding electors as they interpreted the Constitution. I ask you to call on her to immediately apologize and retract her comments,” Roy said in the letter.
He continued: “If Representative Ocasio-Cortez does not apologize immediately, we will be forced to find alternative means to condemn this regrettable statement,” Roy wrote. “It is my sincere hope that we all stop this heightened rhetoric and move forward to actually do the work the American people sent us here to do.”
He did not elaborate on what other kind of action might be taken against Ocasio-Cortez.
