In the wake of giving a speech in which she tried to attack Republicans for their supposed ties to Jeffrey Epstein and ended up just revealing that she hadn’t actually looked into the data she was claiming supported her point (the individual who donated was different than the infamous financier), Jasmine Crockett went on CNN and tried blaming Republicans for her flubbed speech.
As background, Crockett’s flubbed speech came when, during a series of comments she belted out at shouting volume before the House, she insisted, “Folks who also took money from somebody named Jeffrey Epstein, as I had my team dig in very quickly: Mitt Romney, the NRCC, Lee Zeldin, George Bush, WinRed, McCain-Palin, Rick Lazio.”
Continuing, she insisted that the standard of revealing everyone who took Epstein bucks has to be equally applied, saying, “I just want to be clear: If this is the standard that we gonna make, just know we are gonna expose it all. And just know that the FEC filings, they are available for everyone to review. This is absolutely ridiculous.”
EPA Director Zeldin fired back in a brutally to the point quote tweet on X, bringing the receipts and showing her to be a moron. He said, noting that she hadn’t bothered to do some basic research: “Yes Crockett, a physician named Dr. Jeffrey Epstein (who is a totally different person than the other Jeffrey Epstein) donated to a prior campaign of mine. NO 👏 FREAKIN 👏 RELATION 👏 YOU 👏 GENIUS!!!”
It was in the wake of that incident that Rep. Crockett appeared on CNN and tried to insist that it was the fault of Republicans that she had done no proper research and didn’t know about what she was speaking when she appeared before the House and accused Republicans of being tied to a convicted sex trafficker.
That came when the CNN host, Kaitlin Collins, pressing her, asked, “You mentioned Lee Zeldin there. He’s now a cabinet secretary. He responded and said it was actually Dr Jeffrey Epstein, who’s a doctor that doesn’t have any relation to the convicted sex trafficker. Unfortunate for that doctor, but that is who do it into a prior campaign of his. Do you want to correct the record on the people?”
Firing back, Rep. Crockett tried blaming Republicans and said, “I never said that. It was that Jeffrey Epstein, just so that people understand when you make a donation, your picture is not there. And because they decided to spring this on us in real time, I wanted the Republicans to think about what could potentially happen, because I knew that they didn’t even try to go through the FEC. So my team, what they did is they Googled, and that is specifically why I said a Jeffrey Epstein. Unlike Republicans, I at least don’t go out and just tell lies, because it was not the same one. That’s fine.”
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She continued, on the same ridiculous point, “But when Lee Zeldin had something to say, all he had to say was it was a different Jeffrey Epstein. He admitted that he did receive donations from a Jeffrey Epstein, so at least I wasn’t trying to mislead people. Now have I dug in to find out who this doctor is? I have not, so I will trust and take what he says is that it wasn’t that Jeffrey Epstein, but I was not attempting to mislead anybody. I literally had maybe 20 minutes before I had to do that debate.”
Collins said, “Yeah, but people might see that say, well, you’re trying to make it sound like he took money from a registered sex offender.” Crockett insisted, “I did not know…no, but I literally did not know when you search FEC files, and that’s what I had my team to do. I text them, and I say, listen, we’re going up. They’re saying that she took donations right?”
Not done, Collins insisted, “But someone might say, well, your team should have done the homework to make sure.” Crockett snapped, “You could not find that out, not from just doing a quick search on FEC. So number one, I made sure that I was clear that it was a Jeffrey Epstein, but I never said that it was specifically that Jeffrey Epstein, because I knew that we would we would need more time to really dig in.”
Watch the bizarre interview here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video