Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett is one of the most interesting figures in Congress. You may have been introduced to her in recent weeks following a House committee during which Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene insulted her appearance. The verbal spat between the two took the internet by storm and became a viral moment. But that exchange, and her clapback, is only one part of her story as a rising star within the Democratic Party. She joins WITHpod to discuss the impetus for her political work, how her faith keeps her grounded in the often vitriolic world of politics, serving as a criminal justice advocate and more.
This is a rough transcript — please excuse any typos.
Rep. Crockett: A lot of times people try to act like Democrats are the Antichrist. And so then I’m like, my daddy’s a preacher, go look him up, you know. And so I think that it allows me to engage in the conversations and really be a good representation for what actually a lot of black folk are. I mean, when you think about politics and advocacy in general, so much of it was born out of black church and it really is centers to the core of who we are. It’s how we were able to get so much.
I mean, when you think about the leaders, whether you’re talking about Martin Luther King, who comes from more of the traditional Baptist background, or whether you’re talking about Malcolm X, who comes from the Muslim faith. It always, for black folks, somehow our leadership came directly out of the church for moving us forward. And I don’t ever want that to be lost at all.
Chris Hayes: Hello and welcome to “Why Is This Happening” with me, your host, Chris Hayes. You know, Congress doesn’t make a lot of headlines these days unless something’s going sideways, I think I would say. And partly that’s the news media. There’s an expression we have in the news media, we don’t cover the planes that land. We tend to focus on, you know, disaster and conflict.
Also, this Congress, particularly the House, has been historically unproductive. There’s a whole bunch of, kind of objective metrics you could use, and it’s been one of the least productive Congresses in a very, very long time in terms of moving legislation.
It’s also a Congress where there’s a very razor-thin Republican majority and the defining feature of that majority has been dysfunction, factional infighting, multiple ballots to elect the Speaker Kevin McCarthy the first time, and then deposing that Speaker, and then an interregnum in which no one can get the votes, and now Mike Johnson, and threats against Mike Johnson, and battles between various factions for a Republican caucus that seems mostly devoted to sort of signaling their fealty to Donald Trump.
There was a viral incident a few weeks ago. I say all this because the context is there was a viral incident a few weeks ago in a committee hearing where two members of Congress kind of went at it. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican member of Congress from Georgia, and a representative from Texas who represents Dallas and parts of Tarrant County named Jasmine Crockett. Now, you may have seen this go viral. We’re going to talk about what happened and play you some of the sound of what happened in this conversation.
But when I saw it, I thought, oh, you know, I saw a lot of people commenting. It got a lot of life on social media, and there was a little bit of like, oh, these clowns in Congress debasing themselves, or a little bit of when you’re dealing with folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene, you can’t escape but being brought down to her level. But when I saw it, I thought that the congresswoman involved, Representative Jasmine Crockett, is a really, really interesting figure in Congress.
I’ve had the opportunity to talk to her a few times on the show and had done a little research on her background and think she’s a really interesting member of Congress. And again, if you listen to the show, you know that I’m always interested in members who are coming from backgrounds that aren’t the sort of standard backgrounds that a lot of representatives come from. And Congresswoman Crockett is one of those people.
And so I thought a great person to talk to would be Jasmine Crockett herself about both what it’s like to serve in Congress now, what her path was to becoming the United States congressperson, and of course, the by now infamous viral moment. So, Congresswoman Crockett, it’s great to have you in the program.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah, it’s great to be with you, Chris.
Chris Hayes: You and I have talked a bunch before and I’ve known a bit about your background and you were a criminal defense attorney, civil rights attorney. You served in the Texas Statehouse before becoming a member of Congress. A lot of people probably were introduced to you by this crazy moment that happened recently in the House Oversight Committee. And before I get into it, I want to just say up top that you’re, I think, a really interesting politician. There’s a lot I want to get into, so I don’t want to reduce you to this moment.
But I do want to talk about it first because it got out there and it went viral and a lot of people had reactions to it and I wanted to sort of start with that. And so first, before I play some of the sound, I would love for you to just take me through. This is an oversight committee hearing. James Comer is the chair of the oversight committee. Jamie Raskin from Maryland is the ranking member. The oversight committee has been the site of a lot of the most, kind of the Fox News on Capitol Hill center.
It’s where James Comer sort of produces content for Fox News, chasing after Hunter Biden, promising an impeachment that ultimately they didn’t have the goods for, constantly promising these huge explosive revelations about the quote “Biden crime family” that never bear fruit, but always with the intent of sort of producing fireworks that can then be rolled into the Fox News evening programming. And so this took place in that committee. Tell me what happened. Just you take me through it before we play this out.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah, so it was already a very frustrating hearing as most oversight committee hearings are. Definitely didn’t think that I would walk into Congress as a freshman and almost immediately find out that I was going to have to engage in a faux impeachment kind of exercise of sorts. But nevertheless, these folk are basically using this committee to campaign for Donald Trump.
And so on that day, we were supposed to have our committee hearing at 11:00 a.m. The committee hearing was about hopefully for them, jailing Attorney General Merrick Garland, not because he went out and fondled women inappropriately or sexually assaulted any women or committed some type of fraud or engaged in anything that would be by law a crime that required him to be jailed.
But instead, because they were upset because they wanted the audio recordings of the interview, the voluntary interview that was taken of the president as he was being interviewed about the documents that he ultimately had in his possession, that special appointee Hur decided not to go forward on.
Unfortunately, we could not have our hearing at 11:00 a.m. where they were trying to hold the attorney general in contempt for not turning over the audio, even though they had the transcripts for this, because they decided they wanted to take a field trip to New York because they needed to stand with their man. They needed to be by his side.
Chris Hayes: Oh, so they postponed the hearing to go after Garland for not turning over the audio, despite the fact of the transcript, because they wanted to go to New York to do the thing where they stood with Donald Trump in his criminal trial.
Rep. Crockett: Absolutely. So they had to stand with Donny as he was going through what he was going through. And so ultimately, they rescheduled our hearing for 8:00 p.m. So we as Democrats have been at work all day working and now we have to have this late night hearing.
Chris Hayes: I didn’t even know that detail.
Rep. Crockett: Oh, yeah. No, no. We had to have this late night hearing because they went on their field trip. So, it was really kind of like I was already annoyed because here it is, I’m going to be at work.
Chris Hayes: You’re within your rights to be annoyed, I think.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah, I was super annoyed. So anyway, so we’re in the hearing. And of course, they have their grievances against Merrick Garland. Fine. Air your grievances. Say what you got to say. I know what the vote is going to be. We know that you’re going to vote to move forward with the contempt. So like say what you have to say.
But it was so much more infuriating because they were still stuck on court that day and still stuck on doing their service to Donald Trump and making sure that they could get around the gag order and be his mouthpiece. So here it is. Marjorie starts talking about Judge Merchan.
Chris Hayes: This is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s a member of Congress you might have heard of, a Republican from Georgia.
Rep. Crockett: Absolutely.
Chris Hayes: So she’s talking about Juan Merchan in a hearing ostensibly about Merrick Garland.
Rep. Crockett: Correct. They have nothing to do with one another. And this is at 8:00 p.m. at night. So, I’m like, I’m so upset, and like say what you got to say about Merrick Garland, but like, I’m tired. And don’t remind me that you skipped out on work today to go and play in New York. So I was like, do you realize why we’re here? Because like her not knowing the purpose of a hearing, absolutely, that could be a thing with her. And ultimately, when I asked her the question, that is when she decided to lash out against me.
Chris Hayes: And she said some nasty things about your appearance, I believe. And that violates House rules, right? I mean —
Rep. Crockett: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — the normal thing is these House rules exist for a reason.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And they go all the way back, I think, to pre-Civil War when there —
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — was actually famously violence on the floor of the House, which is that you can’t talk to people directly. You’re supposed to evoke them, the gentleman or the gentlewoman. And it’s out of order, I think, usually if you just directly address someone. Is that right?
Rep. Crockett: Yeah. So it’s called engaging in personalities. So, like it’s all about like making sure that you are maintaining a decorum, right? So you’re like the gentlelady. Like there’s nothing gentle about half these people, right.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Rep. Crockett: You’ve got to use like the language and you’re supposed to be polite enough, like you can go on Fox News and Newsmax and say what you got to say, go on Twitter, wherever, go on Truth. You can do whatever you want to outside of the chambers, but we’re supposed to remain somewhat respectful. And so you’re not supposed to do things that would normally be considered offensive and directed at a member while you’re in the chamber or in committee.
Chris Hayes: So she says this thing about you. There’s an objection that it’s out of order, right?
Rep. Crockett: Right. Exactly.
Chris Hayes: And the objection is overruled by the committee.
Rep. Crockett: Ultimately, Chairman Comer overruled it, yeah.
Chris Hayes: And everyone votes to say it’s fine for her to say this nasty thing directed at you.
Rep. Crockett: Well, actually, the chair just makes a decision.
Chris Hayes: I see.
Rep. Crockett: So, essentially she asked to basically remove her words from the record. And you can do that if there’s unanimous consent. And the deal was we would not object to unanimous consent so long as she apologized. So we just simply wanted her to apologize for being offensive. And then no one would object. She’s like, well, I’m not going to apologize, but I’ll go ahead and say that, you know, you can just remove my words from the record.
Well, no. Now, we want a ruling because if we get a ruling saying that you were wrong, which is the only reason that she agreed to say, okay, fine, I’ll remove what I said, is because if the ruling came down the way that it was supposed to, then she was going to be kicked out of committee for the rest of the day, which meant I didn’t have to hear from her. And it also meant that Comer was going to lose one of his votes. Yeah.
Chris Hayes: So he didn’t want to do that. So he ruled them in order. And then your colleague, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was like, wait a second, you can’t do that. That’s not in order. And then you posed a hypothetical question.
Rep. Crockett: Yes.
Chris Hayes: As a question about whether what would be in order or not order. And that hypothetical question got some traction.
Rep. Crockett: Absolutely. So essentially, AOC actually kicked off the objection. So she was at the very beginning. And then Raskin was negotiating and the parliamentarian was advising the Chair. And the agreement was that there would be an apology and Marjorie decided she wasn’t going to do that. So ultimately, when I found out that the Chair was ruling against me, that was when I decided to pose a hypothetical so that he could see that this committee could devolve into certain things. If they’re going to throw punches, just know you may end up having a few thrown back at you.
Chris Hayes: All right. So we’ve stitched together a little bit of this committee, I don’t know if you want to call my highlights or the lowlights or the latter, but —
Rep. Crockett: Yeah, the lowlights.
Chris Hayes: — take a listen to folks that were not familiar with this.
(BEGIN SOUNDBITE)
Rep. Greene: Do you know what we’re here for? I don’t think you know what you’re for.
Rep. Crockett: Well, you’re the one talking about —
Marjorie Taylor Greene: I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.
Rep. Crockett: No, ain’t nothing —
Rep. Comer: Hold on, hold on.
Rep. Crockett: Listen —
Rep. Comer: Order.
Rep. Lynch: Mr. Chairman —
Rep. Raskin: That’s beneath even you Ms. Greene.
Rep. Lynch: — you need to regain order of your committee.
Rep. Comer: Order.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: I do have a point of order and I would like to move to take down Ms. Greene’s words. That is absolutely unacceptable. How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person.
Rep. Comer: Hearing will suspend. Hearing will suspend.
Rep. Greene: Are your feelings hurt?
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: Move her words down.
Rep. Greene: Oh.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: Oh girl, baby girl.
Rep. Greene: Oh, really?
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: Don’t even play.
Rep. Greene: Baby girl? I don’t think that —
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: We are going to move and we’re going to take your words down. Thank you.
Rep. Raskin: I second that motion.
Rep. Comer: Well, you ready to strike your words?
Rep. Greene: Yeah. I’ll do it.
Rep. Comer: Okay. Ms. Greene agrees to strike her words.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: I believe she needs to apologize. No, no, no.
Rep. Comer: Hold on. Then after Mr. Perry you’ll be recognized then Ms. Greene —
Rep. Greene: I’m not apologizing.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: Well, then you’re not striking your word.
Rep. Greene: I am not apologizing.
Rep. Comer: Well, let’s not. Come on, guys.
Rep. Crockett: It’s me.
Rep. Comer: Ms. Crockett.
Rep. Crockett: I’m just curious just to better understand your ruling, if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde, bad built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?
Rep. Comer: A what now?
(END SOUNDBITE)
Chris Hayes: Now, needless to say, bleach blonde, bad built, butch body went viral on TikTok. There were cultural remixes of it. People made songs about it, country songs.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: House music.
Rep. Crockett: Gospel. Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Dance songs.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: I think the Biden campaign put an e-mail out that was like six B’s in a row.
Rep. Crockett: They did. They did.
Chris Hayes: I have a few questions about this.
Rep. Crockett: Okay.
Chris Hayes: One is I have had the phrase bad built in my head since hearing it because as an arrangement of words, I have never encountered it. But there’s something very cutting and specific about the phrase bad built. Where did bad built come from?
Rep. Crockett: It came from my granny. So, my granny and if anybody knows anything about older Black women, they say a lot of stuff like they just don’t care. And so my granny was good for saying that somebody was bad built. And so while she probably was my favorite person on the face of the planet and I miss her every single day and I could only imagine, you know, what she would think of me now.
But it’s amazing when you think about how important people like my grandma has been to my life. And even when they’re gone, they’re always still with you. And so I have been able to share my granny with the whole world. But no, that was something that my granny used to say.
Chris Hayes: All right. The second thing I want to ask is what the reaction was like to this, because obviously, like, I think in a in the sort of Drake v. Kendrick Lamar sense, like you got the Kendrick Lamar half of it.
Rep. Crockett: Absolutely. Yep.
Chris Hayes: So like, I think you had the kind of final word.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: But then at the same level, people were like, there’s a certain like, oh, this is what Congress has come. This is what it’s descended to and I saw a lot of that.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And I was sort of torn because I don’t like to be too pearl-clutchy. But also there is a reason those rules exist so that it doesn’t devolve into this.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah. Exactly.
Chris Hayes: What was your sort of takeaway from this episode?
Rep. Crockett: Yeah. So here’s the deal. We were trying to do what Democrats try to do all the time. We were trying to follow the rules because the real party of law and order is the Democratic Party. And so this is why AOC jumped in. She’s the vice ranking member on the committee. And then Jamie Raskin was right there talking to the chairman. He is the ranker on the committee. And there was an agreement that was made, which is why, you know, she’s like, yeah, I’ll strike my words, but it has to be by unanimous consent.
And so we understand the rules. We try to play by the rules. We honor the rules of decorum in this body. We’ve seen a devolution of Congress and people call it a circus and things like that. But it’s all been the MAGA folk. It’s all been the right. We know that they were engaged in physical altercations from the Speaker of the House, elbowing one of his members. There was another situation where somebody got chased down in the hall. I don’t remember exactly who that was, but it was during fight week is what I call it.
And then we also had the situation on the Senate side where Senator Bernie Sanders had to interject. We also have had Marjorie Taylor Greene disrupting the president in the State of the Union address this year, as well as last year. She was yelling at him. There’s the images of that and the audio of that. We also know that Marjorie Taylor Greene got into it with the other MAGA darling, Lauren Boebert, and she called her the B word on the floor and they got into it. It was all about who filed to impeach the president of the United States first. And so they had their own spat.
But it was all kept on that side. This was the first time that they crossed over or any one of them crossed over and attempted to bring it to this side. And, you know, for me, it wasn’t so much about doing a tit for tat, even though that’s how people have described it. That’s not what I did. Number one, I never addressed her at all. I asked a question.
Chris Hayes: You asked a hypothetical.
Rep. Crockett: I asked a question that was parliamentary in nature to seek clarification and also kind of send like a warning to the Chair, like, just know, I got bars. Like, so this is not the smoke that you all want. Like, we can do this if this is what you’re going to turn this committee into. And I don’t expect Marjorie to ever honor the rules of decorum or respect who we are supposed to be when we’re within the halls of Congress.
But the question is, Chairman, how are you going to conduct your hearings? Is this what you want? And so it was more so for him. And that’s why I addressed it to him. And I still stayed within the rules. So not only did I respond, but I responded in a way that also was reflective of the fact that, again, Democrats can actually do this game better while also staying within the rules of decorum.
And I think that that was really important for me to do instead of kind of like, you know, going back and forth and being as grade school as some people want to say we were. I could have been like your mama. That’s like the grade school thing, you know?
Chris Hayes: Right. Right. Right.
Rep. Crockett: But I didn’t do that.
Chris Hayes: This is your first term in Congress, right?
Rep. Crockett: It is.
Chris Hayes: So you just you just got there in ‘22.
Rep. Crockett: ‘23. I was elected in ‘22, yeah.
Chris Hayes: That’s right. You were elected in ‘22, right. You got there in ‘23. Okay. So, this is your first term.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Let’s zoom out one level from this interaction, but just the broader context of what it’s like to work in that House. You’re coming in having never been in the majority. You’re coming in having never served in the body, never having served under previous Congresses so this is all you know. And the first thing is, you know, a historic multi-ballot speaker vote and then the first ever, you know, vote of no confidence essentially in the Speaker to topple him. And then —
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — a long period of interregnum, and then Mike Johnson. What is it like to work in that body as the first time that you’re ever serving and only knowing this?
Rep. Crockett: It is wild. It’s interesting because coming out of the State House, I obviously was in a significant minority being in Texas. But, you know, the idea is that you level up when you go to the big house. And it seems like I actually went down a little bit, right? Because even being in the minority in the Texas House and granted, you know, I disagree with the vast majority of the agenda that has been moving very swiftly through the chambers in Texas. But somehow they figured out how to function. So I was used to like a functioning majority.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Rep. Crockett: And like it absolutely is to the benefit of the American people that these people can’t function.
Chris Hayes: Right, right, right. Yeah, right. Probably better they can’t. Right.
Rep. Crockett: Correct. It’s a lot better that they can’t, but I expected to walk into a situation where they were trying to function. And considering the fact that the Democrats have the White House and the Democrats have the Senate, I thought these people will know how to function in this divided government, and they can’t. They are unable or and or unwilling.
Chris Hayes: Well, it’s interesting because the Texas State House for years has operated under a kind of like almost tripartite and Texas Senate as well, factions. There’s a Republican supermajority in both houses. There’s a Democratic minority. But the Republican supermajority has both kind of normal Republicans. I mean, is any Texas Republican normal?
But there’s the more Republicans who have some kind of set of tangible objectives in terms of getting stuff done. And then there’s like the real wing nuts.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And they sort of functions with a kind of tacit, sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit partnership between the Democrats and Republicans on the kind of the functional part of the caucus as opposed to the wing nuts, right. Is that a fair —
Rep. Crockett: Yeah, it is. So, interestingly enough, as you brought up the speaker fight, no Democrat defected when it came down to it. Everyone was voting for Hakeem Jeffries. On the state level, that’s not what it was. There’s like two kind of factions that are trying to like —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Rep. Crockett: — and Democrats jump in and they pick the lesser of the evils. And so then you also end up in a situation where Democrats have chairmanships over committees. It’s not a matter of it’s all Republicans as chairs and things like that. And much like we see in the U.S. House, the House tends to function wildly differently than the Senate. And so I will say there was more of a cohesiveness in the House. It definitely ain’t good for sure, but like, you know, when we saw the impeachment of our attorney general, that was Democrats and decent enough Republicans coming together and saying, well, this guy has like gone too far.
Now, mind you, he’s been under federal indictment for almost a decade at this point, but it took him trying to take taxpayer dollars to go ahead and pay off a settlement for them to say, okay, now you went too far. Now, granted, I believe that he went too far a long time ago.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Rep. Crockett: But that was kind of the breaking point for some of the people. And they spent a lot of money. You know, we don’t have limits in Texas. And so a number of those Republicans that voted for the impeachment of our corrupt attorney general, they ended up being primaried and they lost. So, the Texas House is going to move further to the right. And I wonder if they question the heavy gerrymandering that they did in this last session or the session that I was there because if it wasn’t so heavily gerrymandered and there were more normal lines, they would probably be in a better position —
Chris Hayes: To survive those primary challenges.
Rep. Crockett: Exactly, exactly.
Chris Hayes: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting because it’s an interesting training ground. How long do you serve in the in the Texas ledge?
Rep. Crockett: Just one crazy freshman term.
Chris Hayes: Just one term. How old are you, Congresswoman?
Rep. Crockett: I am 43.
Chris Hayes: Okay.
Rep. Crockett: And Chris, your people need to tell you, don’t be asking those questions. No, but it’s all good. It’s only because people can Google and get it.
Chris Hayes: It’s on Wikipedia.
Rep. Crockett: Exactly.
Chris Hayes: Well, you’ve had a very quick rise. Tell me first what your background is, where you grew up and how you became a lawyer.
Rep. Crockett: Yes. So, from St. Louis, Missouri, originally born and raised there. And after I graduated high school, I went to undergrad in Memphis, Tennessee at Rhodes College, who’s definitely gotten more so a bad rap because of one of the Supreme Court justices, Amy Coney Barrett.
Chris Hayes: Oh, right.
Rep. Crockett: So, interestingly enough, I don’t think that we ended up getting the same education, but nevertheless —
Chris Hayes: Is that like a Bible college?
Rep. Crockett: It is. Okay, fine. Yes. Yeah.
Chris Hayes: No, I don’t mean that disparagingly. I mean, that descriptively.
Rep. Crockett: It is.
Chris Hayes: I mean, there are many throughout the South. There are, you know, largely they’re Southern Baptists, not always exclusively —
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — but often Southern Baptists are called Bible colleges.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah, we’re not Southern Baptists, but yeah.
Chris Hayes: But it was. And did you like it there?
Rep. Crockett: I actually did. I did. But I did endure some hurdles. The very first time that I ever felt or experienced racism was actually on my campus. And it is a part of the fabric of who I am and why people see the fight that they see. And it’s actually what really propelled me on this legal journey. So, I was always a math and science girl. That’s what I was always great at. I never took a political science course a day of my life. I wasn’t really big on history. I wasn’t big on English either. I was always into math and science.
And so for me, it was going to be become an anesthesiologist or a CPA or an engineer. And ultimately, I thought that I was going to become a CPA. So I majored in business. And I went through this experience where I was a junior, myself, along with other African-American students on campus. We were the targets of hate crimes, direct targets. They put hate mail into our on-campus mailboxes. They were keying various people’s cars with the N-word.
And I felt something that I never felt before, and I definitely felt like I was a little lost in a space that I felt safe. When I entered Rhodes College, I was one of 18 Black students in my class.
Chris Hayes: Out of how many?
Rep. Crockett: It was close to 400.
Chris Hayes: Oh, wow. Okay.
Rep. Crockett: And then by the time I left, there were probably only about 10 of us left. But, you know, we’re in the heart of Memphis and we’re in North Memphis, not necessarily Lily-white.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Rep. Crockett: So, you know, it really made me question who my real friends were. And it was just a different feeling, even coming out of St. Louis, Missouri. And so they brought in the Cochran firm to try to investigate and figure out what was going on. A Black female lawyer who graduated from University of Houston School of Law was assigned to me and she became my shero. They never really figured out what happened. But having someone that was there and advocating and trying to fight for me, it really kind of changed my trajectory a bit so, that was kind of the beginning for me.
Chris Hayes: When you got there, were you raised in a religious Christian household?
Rep. Crockett: Yeah. My dad’s a preacher.
Chris Hayes: Your dad’s a preacher. So —
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — that meal (ph), you must have felt familiar and comfortable.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: But those first two years before this happened, junior year, what was your experience of campus, like the levels of, you know, friendship, social life, racial tension, et cetera?
Rep. Crockett: Yeah. I never felt any racial tension at all on campus. I was very good friends with everybody. I was a bit of a social butterfly. I kind of always have been until now. I’m actually a little less social now, which is really weird. But nevertheless, they had started a gospel choir. I did that. I played softball for a second, did the dance team for a little bit. So, I mean, I was really engaged. And even when this happened, I actually did a musical on campus, which was “Little Shop of Horrors.”
So I’ve always loved singing and not really that good of an actress. But nevertheless, I always have loved singing. And it was actually the mock trial coach. So I usually tell people that if I tried at my life, it would look nothing like it currently is, but God kind of finds a way to yell at me. And so him recruiting me to do mock trial combined with my experience were kind of the two things that made me say, okay, fine, I’m listening.
Chris Hayes: I mean, it sounds like a horrible and traumatic experience.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And this was directed at other Black students, not just you, you’re saying.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And it was actual mail being put in your mailboxes?
Rep. Crockett: Yeah. So if it’s the on-campus mailbox, that information just isn’t public. And it made me really question like my friendships because no one from outside could come and get that information. And it was only two Black students. Yeah.
Chris Hayes: So it’s someone on campus who’s putting this in your mailbox.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: It was never resolved. The perpetrators were never found or punished.
Rep. Crockett: No.
Chris Hayes: And you had this lawyer who was there who sort of inspired you. So you went to law school afterwards.
Rep. Crockett: I did. So I was recruited to do mock trial. So the mock trial coach, I wouldn’t do it my junior year because kids were crying, saying they won’t get into law school and I wasn’t going. And he told me to promise to go back my senior year. I went back my senior year. I became a national All-American. He said, well, you trust me now and just apply to law school. I applied to law school, got a full ride with a stipend to attend law school in Houston. I actually got waitlisted for University of Houston.
And so I ended up at Texas Southern, ended up top 10 percent of my class. And then they were having some money issues with finding my money. And so I then applied again to University of Houston. And after showing that I had great ability to do well, they accepted me and I transferred. And so ultimately I graduated as a Cougar.
Chris Hayes: And what kind of lawyering did you do when you got out of law school?
Rep. Crockett: Yeah. So, interestingly enough, I mean, what got me to law school is absolutely not the way that I decided to go. I found out I could make money —
Chris Hayes: Yes.
Rep. Crockett: — and so I was like, oh, I want to go where the money is.
Chris Hayes: That happens to a lot of people in law school.
Rep. Crockett: So, yes —
Chris Hayes: When you interview them first, you’re like, well, criminal defense, environmental law —
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — you know, and then it’s like, I’m going to summer at WilmerHale and they have very good hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. And they took us on a boat.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah, I know. Yeah. You lose your way a little bit, yeah.
Chris Hayes: No, I honestly I’m not saying that.
Rep. Crockett: No, no, no.
Chris Hayes: I mean, first of all, people have a ton of debt. So that’s a huge factor.
Rep. Crockett: It is. But I just realized I could make money.
Chris Hayes: Right, yeah.
Rep. Crockett: I didn’t quite realize this. So, I ended up doing class action defense work for a firm. And I really wanted to be in the courtroom. I clerked for Shook, Hardy and Bacon, which has a large presence and I thought for a while that I would go back to the Midwest. So I went to their main location right there in Kansas City. And then I was like, never mind. I remember why I left the Midwest.
And so I ended up at a small firm that was really running point for so many big cases that were coming through at that time, they call the Rocket Docket, which was in the eastern district of Texas. So behind Silicon Valley, it was the fastest moving kind of docket for so many intellectual property cases and things like that. So we were always hired by the big guys. But it gave me a chance to kind of get engaged in litigation a lot earlier.
But pretty early on in my career, I was like, wait a minute. Why did I go to law school again? Like, I just like, I don’t think I like this. The hours were long. I didn’t really like defending some of the stuff I was defending. And I just felt like, yeah, I don’t want to do this. And I almost quit law completely. But they decided to open a public defender’s office in Texarkana. And while I had said I would never deal with criminals because I was like, I don’t want somebody trying to come kill me if I mess up. So I was like, I don’t want to do that. I did decide that it was still a better way for me to really get the trial experience that I wanted.
And so I went and interviewed with my boss at the time. His name was Charlie. And I remember walking in and he was like, you have no experience and I was like, that’s okay because I’m smart. And he was looking at me like, what? You know, and I was like, I’ll figure it out. And I was like, I will study, I will read. And I was like, but the one thing that you’ll get out of me that you probably won’t get from anyone else is that I’m black. And he looked at me and I was like, listen, I know the numbers.
I will walk in with an instant rapport with so many of the criminal defendants that you guys are going to be charged with defending. And that’s something that no education can give you. And I was the only black female lawyer in I don’t even know how many.
Chris Hayes: In the office.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah. Well, in the office and in the cities.
Chris Hayes: Wow.
Rep. Crockett: And so it really did make a difference. It brought so much value to the office, but he took a chance on me and it really worked out really, really well.
Chris Hayes: More of our conversation after this quick break.
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Chris Hayes: What was the most surprising thing to you from practicing as a criminal defender about the way the criminal justice system functions? Because I imagine that you had not had a lot of interaction with it up until that point. You were doing civil litigation, you’re at a small Christian college. And, you know, the system it’s an enormous entity with its own sort of set of internal logic and internal rules and institutions and patterns and practices and traditions. And what struck you about it as you were coming to learn this system?
Rep. Crockett: Yeah, man, so much. I was incredibly green. So, as a kid that grew up in the 90s, I mean, I could rap almost any 90s rap song that you like put in front of me because my older cousins were listening to all of it. But for me, it was just a song. It wasn’t anything other than a song, but it definitely brought color and informed me so much more about the experiences that people were having with law enforcement and otherwise. I was like, oh, is that what you meant? Like, this is this is a very real thing.
And so it brought to life so many lyrics of the experiences that so many of those that were rap about were saying. And so I really ended up in the belly of the beast, in my opinion, because when you start talking about criminal justice and what it looks like and the inequities, especially when you start talking about in small towns, it is even more ridiculous. And you start talking about small towns in Texas and Arkansas because I practice on both sides.
I mean, you could see just the stark difference in how prosecutions were sought and the types of time that was sought and the lack of compassion and understanding that existed. And even the juries, I mean, the jury verdicts were just off the charts. I’m like, this would never happen in Dallas, you know, by the time I started practicing in Dallas. And so it also gave me my real taste of some of the struggles that exist that cause people to be caught up in the system.
And it is why I will always be kind of a fighter for those that have been ignored, forgotten or even targeted. Because the average person has not had those conversations to better understand why did you decide to sell drugs. Tell me what was going on, because I have to know this if I’m going to adequately defend you.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Rep. Crockett: Or learning the stories of the cycles of abuse that people endured or learning the stories of the cycle of what some would call the generational curses, where it’s like everybody’s in prison. My mama, my daddy, my stepdad, like everybody’s been in prison. And it’s kind of been all I’ve known. And it really brought me, in my opinion, the closest that I’ve ever been to the real struggles that exist in this country.
Chris Hayes: I had you on the program the other night and we talked about this, but I want to talk about a little more here because I’ve been thinking about what you said. You’re sort of a perfect person to ask about Donald Trump’s conviction because you practice criminal law. You are a public defender in Texarkana. You’re a black woman from the South. And there’s this very strange thing happening where Trump is sort of, I mean, he doesn’t really have an option, right? He just got convicted of 34 felony counts. It’s, you know, if it were anyone else, that would be you’d say, well, that’s bad.
So he’s kind of trying to lean into it. And he did this rally in the Bronx where he had these two rappers with him on stage who are both been indicted for a sort of widespread conspiracy that includes murder and drug trafficking, if I’m not mistaken. And he’s kind of like there’s this discourse of him and his allies being like, this will help us with black voters —
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — because they’ll see themselves in me, Donald Trump. And as someone who represented black clients caught up in the system as one of the few black women in Congress, like, what do you think about that?
Rep. Crockett: It really is infuriating for me. And, you know, when I was on with you and playing some of the clips and it was almost like a pile on of emotions for me because I have had people that have been treated so much worse than this guy. And he believes that somehow they will see him and say, well, just like MAGA is, you know, like that’s our orange Jesus. Now, all of a sudden you’re going to be our savior. Like, miss me. Talk to me about policies, like policy changes that you want to make.
I think he could get so much further if he’s saying, listen, these are policies that I want to implement because now I have gone through the system that he may end up, you know, having the ear of people, but just trying to play people and saying, well, I’m just like you. No, you’re not.
You know, I can tell you stories that led me to decide that I wanted to run for higher office, that I wanted to make a change to the laws, because, you know, one of those situations was even as I was running for the State House, I had a 17-year-old that was accused of being an accomplice to murder, which means he was facing murder. They don’t say accomplice in the charge.
Chris Hayes: Like felony murder. It was a felony murder charge.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah, because it was capital murder. So here it is, he’s facing capital murder. He’s 17-years-old. Texas is one of only five states that says at the age of 17, you’re an adult only for criminal justice purposes. And here it is. His mom was on felony parole. His dad was in prison and his stepdad was also on felony probation or parole, right. And he’s got a public defender because they don’t have money, or I’m court appointed. I was doing a court appointed case.
And this kid could not afford to get out pretrial. His family couldn’t afford to get him out pretrial. And so he sat in custody for two years, two years waiting to go to trial. And this kid was incredibly courageous because his family is saying, listen, they’re going to mess you up. They’re going to send you to prison. You just need to take a —
Chris Hayes: Take a deal.
Rep. Crockett: And I’m sitting there like there is no evidence, like there is no evidence. I’m not saying he did anything wrong or not, but I’m saying there is no evidence that the state has. And I’m fighting with the state. And they’re literally looking to take his entire life. And so here it was, my initial offer was 30 years day for day. This meant that this kid would come out of prison at the age of 47. And they never, ever alleged that he had actually done any of the killing anyway, right. Forty-seven-years-old. So we fight, we fight, we fight.
And basically about a week before trial, they said, we’ll offer you 10 on murder. So that meant he would be eligible after five years. So his family is like, yo, take it. Now, if we went to trial and we lost, he was facing mandatory 40 years day for day. That is what he was facing. And he had to put his trust in me as his court appointed attorney. And I started to get nervous because I’m like, well, wait a minute. Five years is better than 12 jurors who will look at you and know that you have pending drug charges against you, who will find out at sentencing that you have this juvie record. I just don’t trust it. And he said, I believe in you. Let’s fight it out. And I got to the day before trial and the state dismissed the case.
Chris Hayes: Straight up dismissed.
Rep. Crockett: Straight up dismissed. And there was this, oh, you won. And I’m like, did I? Because I had a kid who lost two years of his life, who did not finish high school because he was sitting behind bars because he could not afford to get out because the presumption of innocence did not work for him. So when Donald Trump starts talking this noise, I literally look at it as noise because that’s not the real experience. And honestly, he’s not taking two seconds to go and try to find out what is it to be black in America and to go through the criminal justice system. And it looks nothing like what he experienced.
Chris Hayes: We’ll be right back after we take this quick break.
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Chris Hayes: One of the points that drives me crazy and you highlighted here is who is benefited by delay completely flips based on whether you are incarcerated pretrial or not. And this is really the change in the whole thing. If you are incarcerated pretrial as your client was, then delay is bad for you because they’re just locked up and you’re locked up.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And the system goes so slow.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And prosecutors come and say, we’re not ready yet, judge. Could we roll it over?
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: I’m going to be on vacation in August. Rolls over, winds its way slowly.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: On the other hand, Trump was out.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Right. Delay works for him. So the entire way the process works and delay benefits has been completely put on its head.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And in fact —
Rep. Crockett: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — the delay is the tool by which pleas are produced, which is the tool by which the whole system functions because there is no capacity to try everyone. So you have to have pleas.
Rep. Crockett: Exactly. That’s exactly right. And this idea of speedy trial, right, and how you define it and what it looks like. And the rules were basically people that were incarcerated and it went from most serious offense on down. That is supposed to be the priority. And so people that were out on bond, they never want to go to trial, especially if they knew they didn’t have a good chance. You know, like it was hard to get them. Like, they’re not —
Chris Hayes: Right, exactly. Yes, so you’re on a bond. You don’t like delay.
Rep. Crockett: No. Yeah. You’re like, forget that. Like they’re like, oh, if I pay you more money, can you get me another continuance? And it’s like, that’s not how it works, guys, right. But that’s very, very true. And we see that there is this kind of breakdown and all of the norms when it comes to trying cases, because you know what, none of my clients had the benefit of putting three people onto the highest court of the land or into any of the courts.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. And they didn’t have any interlocutory appeals to send up to that court.
Rep. Crockett: They did not. And they didn’t have the benefit of running for office and raising money to pay their very expensive attorney’s fees. Like they don’t, like they’re not going to have 50 appeals before you even get to trial because they’re going through every interlocutory appeal. You know, he’s been convicted. It’s not a final conviction. He’s going to go through as many appeals after appeal, after appeal as he can. The average person does not have that money.
So, again, when you started talking about Black folk can understand me. No, they can’t, because that has not been their existence. They make decisions. And we’ve seen so many people that said, I took a plea because it was what I had to do for my family —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Rep. Crockett: — because they couldn’t afford it and I needed to get out as soon as possible and minimize the fact that I’m going to be gone. Those are the real decisions that a lot of people have had to make in this country. And Donald Trump has never had to make a decision that comes close to that.
Chris Hayes: So what made you want to run for office the first time?
Rep. Crockett: Yeah. So doing the criminal work, definitely there’s a significant overlap with the civil rights work. You find out about who the bad cops are and you hear these stories and they’re told over and over and over. And, you know, one of the places I felt like I was losing too much in both of these arenas where I may have people that are taking pleas because they just don’t believe that they’ll ever be given a fair shot when they go to trial. And I’m asking them to trust me and they literally have lost belief in the system.
As well as those mothers that I’ve had to talk to and say, while I know you lost your baby, we’re going to do everything we can, but our hands are a bit tied from things such as qualified immunity.
Chris Hayes: You’re saying lost your baby at the hands of police?
Rep. Crockett: At the hands of police, yeah. And so, you know, you start to think, am I really doing enough fighting one case at a time? I can’t be everywhere and I can’t fight every case. And so for me, I was like, I need to change the laws in this state. We’ve got 254 counties in the state of Texas, 30 million people. Maybe if I can effectuate change to how prosecutions come about or what a stop looks like, I can, number one, hopefully save lives.
And number two, hopefully we can see a little bit more parity between what happens to say that kid that’s caught with a brownie and the big city versus the kid that’s caught with a brownie that’s laced with marijuana in the small towns. In the small towns, they’ll give them the felony conviction. In the big city, they’ll reduce it down to a misdemeanor and give them an opportunity to go to college, to get the financial aid that they need and to be the amazing, you know, citizens that we know that they can be. And so I just wanted to bring about a bigger change and hopefully save some lives at the same time.
Chris Hayes: So you ran in 2020, is that right?
Rep. Crockett: Yes.
Chris Hayes: So that was your first race.
Rep. Crockett: It was not. That was my first race for the State House. Actually, my very, very first race that nobody ever talks about, I try to bring it up when I’m encouraging candidates was actually I ran for the district attorney position when I was 28 years old in Texarkana and the state of Texas had not elected a black woman DA.
Chris Hayes: They were like, we’re going to keep that streak going.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah, pretty much. But that level of frustration, again, wanting to do more. And I felt like I need to make the decisions. So I actually raised a whopping $7,000. You could not tell me anything. And I won the early votes and ultimately lost on election day. They spent close to $60,000 to beat me.
Chris Hayes: What year was that?
Rep. Crockett: 2010.
Chris Hayes: 2010. So, at 28 you run for district attorney, you lost —
Rep. Crockett: And then I said I would never run for office again.
Chris Hayes: So you lost in (inaudible). It must have been crushing.
Rep. Crockett: I was okay with it. I mean, I don’t know what I expected. I consulted with my pastor at the time and I was like, I think this is what God is leading me to do, but I don’t want to do it. And so I ran, I educated people. I actually informed policy changes within the DA’s office based on things that I proposed. And ultimately, it’s just not where I was supposed to be. But the lessons that I learned from actually having run a race before allowed me to be successful when I ended up running a decade later for the State House.
Chris Hayes: Right. Because you had you had some reps. You kind of knew what you were doing.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah. Absolutely.
Chris Hayes: You just mentioned your pastor. Are you still religious?
Rep. Crockett: I am. And, you know, you played that clip and it’s interesting because my pastor texts me while the hearing was going on. He actually called me. He ultimately texted me, but he called me and I was in that hearing. And it was after this exchange had taken place. And I text him. I said, I’m in a hearing. He said, I know. And I mean, why are you calling me in the middle of a hearing? And he ends up texting me and says, I need a warning before you say. And then he said, like, be six. And I was like, huh? I was like, I guess my team —
Chris Hayes: I guess this were — escaped.
Rep. Crockett: — must have —
Chris Hayes: It’s escape the room.
Rep. Crockett: Well, I thought my team clipped it and put it online. And that is not what happened. Everybody else was clipping it. And so it was going immediately viral because I was still sitting in committee when he called me about the interaction.
Chris Hayes: How do you think about your faith and how it informs what you do? And particularly in a time when certain forms of Christian faith, including, you know, the Amy Coney Barrett, who went to your same school. She’s Catholic, so it’s a little different. But so much of the presence of pious Christian faith, devoted Christian faith in public life is coded with conservative republicanism and increasingly support for Trump.
Rep. Crockett: Yeah. You know, I think that it is great because a lot of times people try to act like Democrats are the Antichrist. And so then I’m like, my daddy’s a preacher. Go look him up, you know. And so I think that it allows me to engage in the conversations and really be a good representation for what actually a lot of black folk are. I mean, when you think about politics and advocacy in general, so much of it was born out of black church.
And it really is centered to the core of who we are. It’s how we were able to get so much. I mean, when you think about the leaders, whether you’re talking about Martin Luther King, who comes from more of the traditional Baptist background, or whether you’re talking about Malcolm X, who comes from the Muslim faith, it always for black folks somehow, our leadership came directly out of the church for moving us forward.
And I don’t ever want that to be lost at all. And I think that, you know, there are those that are trying to get us back into finding our voice and our leaders in black church. And my pastor is absolutely one of those. Freddie Haynes is very well known throughout the country because he is an activist and I like to call him a throwback preacher. But when somebody tries to, quote, unquote, “out Christian me,” it’s a little tough when you’re coming at me like that.
And I think that what we see out of this Christian nationalism movement is probably what I would imagine those Christians who justified slavery to have been. Those are those kind of people. And I don’t think that they love the same Jesus that I love. I think that tolerance and respect and compassion and empathy is who my faith instructs me to be. I don’t have to agree with you to love you, respect you. And I think that I can bring more people to Jesus by how I live.
And so, you know, even when it comes to working together, I say a lot of times, I’m like, listen, if you want to do good by the people, I’m down. I don’t really care if you’re MAGA, if you’re just a general Republican or otherwise, I want to do the work and I can work with anybody. And I know that we will definitely disagree on tons of things, but where we don’t disagree, I don’t hate you. I hate your ways. I hate some of your policies, but I really am a very loving person.
And, you know, for me to get angry enough that I needed to prove a point with the Marjorie Taylor Greene situation, you know, that’s not what I want to happen on a daily basis at all because I don’t think name calling gets us anywhere. And I’d rather build relationships and open hearts and get them to kind of start to be the Christians they proclaim to be than to engage in kind of that level of back and forth.
Chris Hayes: Representative Jasmine Crockett is the representative for Texas’s 30th congressional district. She’s serving her first term after one term in the Texas State House. She’s a civil rights attorney and criminal attorney. That was fantastic, Congresswoman. Thank you so much.
Rep. Crockett: Thank you, Chris.
Chris Hayes: Once again, great thanks to Representative Crockett. I learned a ton. I still can’t get over the fact that she and Amy Coney Barrett went to the same small Christian school for college. Amazing factoid. You can e-mail us with your feedback at withpod@gmail.com. You can get in touch with us using the #WITHpod. You can follow us on TikTok by searching for #WITHpod. You can follow me on Threads, Bluesky and Twitter, all with the username #chrislhayes. I do lots of posting all over the place.
“Why Is This Happening” is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and Brendan O’Melia, engineered by Bob Mallory and featuring music by Eddie Cooper. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. New episodes come out every Tuesday.
“Why Is This Happening?” is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and Brendan O’Melia, engineered by Bob Mallory and featuring music by Eddie Cooper. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here by going to NBCNews.com/whyisthishappening?