Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) blasted socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for suggesting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was targeting her because Pelosi was racist, saying that it shows “how weak” Ocasio-Cortez’s “argument is.”
Clay also directed fire at Ocasio-Cortez’s far-left chief-of-staff Saikat Chakrabarti, the far-left Justice Democrats, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA).
“What a weak argument, because you can’t get your way and because you’re getting pushback you resort to using the race card? Unbelievable. That’s unbelievable to me,” Clay said. “I could care less. I could really care less. I agree with the Speaker. Four people, four votes out of 240 people, who cares.”
“It shows you how weak their argument is when they have to resort and direct racist accusations toward Speaker Pelosi … it’s very disappointing to me,” Clay continued.
Clay’s remarks came in response to Ocasio-Cortez suggesting earlier this week that Pelosi was racist in response to Pelosi’s criticisms of her.
“When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But the persistent singling out . . . it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful . . . the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”
The fight between Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi has been building for months as Pelosi has repeatedly dismissed Ocasio-Cortez and many of her extreme ideas. In April, Pelosi said that a glass of water with a “D” next to it could win in Ocasio-Cortez’s district.
Clay also slammed “juvenile” Chakrabarti, who idolizes Nazi sympathizers, after Chakrabarti said that centrist Democrats were “hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s.”
“It shows you how ignorant and little history [Chakrabarti] knows, how ignorant he is to American history,” Clay said. “How dare he.”
Clay then blasted the far-left Justice Democrats, saying: “They’re missing the fact that we have a very thin margin of a majority that we’re operating under and apparently it doesn’t matter to Justice Democrats, they just want to get skins. They want to score points for whatever reason. But I find it juvenile, their tactics, I find their ignorance to be beyond belief about American history and about who are really segregationists. And so how dare they try to play the race card at this point, it shows you the weakness of their arguments.”