Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) accused House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) of going “ballistic” and “ranting” after Democrats in the House of Representatives sought to remove any reference to God in the oath administered prior to a witness’ testimony.
“I sit on the Natural Resources Committee and in our original proposed rules for the committee, we proposed that we drop the oath or we allow witnesses to simply say it voluntarily if they chose to, which to me makes perfect sense,” Huffman said on Sunday while appearing on “Freethought Matters,” a show sponsored by the hardline atheist Freedom From Religion Foundation.
“And wouldn’t you know, Liz Cheney just went ballistic,” Huffman continued. “She smelled blood in the water, went on Fox News and started ranting about how Democrats were dropping God from the Congress.”
Accordingly, the Democrat-controlled House Committee on Natural Resources moved to eliminate “so help you, God” as part of its proposed rule packages in January. The Committee also sought to replace all gender-specific pronouns in official documents.
“It is incredible, but not surprising, that the Democrats would try to remove God from committee proceedings in one of their first acts in the majority,” Cheney responded to the Committee’s draft, at the time. “They really have become the party of Karl Marx.”
The proposal received such heightened backlash that Committee Chairman Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) was forced to include a manager’s amendment, which re-inserted “so help you, God” back into the oath. The rules package subsequently was approved by unanimous consent.
“At our next meeting, the Republicans — one by one — made these pronouncements about how, you know, we shouldn’t be against God and Democrats were against God,” Huffman continued. “And unfortunately, my Democratic colleagues backed down and so we now nominally still have the same oath.”
Interestingly, despite the widespread blowback and party-wide dissent, Huffman singled out House Republicans’ top-ranking female.
“Apart from his absurd answer, listen to how this male member speaks about a female colleague,” a senior GOP aide told The Daily Wire. “[Huffman] says she ‘went ballistic,’ that ‘she smelled blood in the water,’ and that she was ‘ranting.’”
“If any Republican male said that about a female Democrat, they would immediately get labeled as being sexist and offensive,” the aide continued. “But, when a Democrat does it to a female Republican, it doesn’t even register.”
The Democratic lawmaker’s arguably sexist description of Cheney comes as four of his caucus’ most high-profile members have been consistently accusing their political opponents of harboring a bias against women.
The Wyoming congresswoman has repeatedly condemned the progressive quartet — consisting of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) — for proclaiming that those who publicly disagree with them do so out of sexist animus.
“Our opposition to our socialist colleagues has absolutely nothing to do with their gender, with their religion, or with their race,” Cheney said in July. “It has to do with the content of their policies.”
Democrats have largely rallied behind the accusations from the four rank-and-file members.
“Liz Cheney will always defend God. Period,” a spokesperson for the Wyoming congresswoman told The Daily Wire. “If that bothers Rep. Huffman, we’ll be praying for him.”