Rep. Rashida Tlaib said Thursday she apologizes if she made Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., feel like she was "calling him a racist" for bringing HUD official Lynne Patton in front of the House Oversight Committee to refute claims that the president is a racist.
However, the Michigan Democrat told CNN's "New Day" that she thinks Meadows committed a racist "act."
"I feel like the act was," Tlaib told anchor Alisyn Camerota, who asked her if she thinks Meadows is a racist. "That's up to the American people to decide whether or not he is."
Tlaib said she wants Patton, who disagreed in a Fox News interview Thursday with Tlaib's calling her a "prop," to know that her comments were meant as "no disrespect to her at all."
"I think she should be commended for her extreme leadership, for her work in the HUD organization, the administration," said Tlaib. "That was not the way I think my colleagues should have been able to debate that issue whether or not to even disagree with Mr. Cohen. I think there was a better way of doing that.”
But Tlaib, a Muslim, said that as a person of color, she felt it was important to "speak truth to power," and she does believe Meadows knew where she was coming from, leading to him taking some of his objections to her comments back.
"I think I needed to express my frustration and also the hurt that I think a lot of us felt at the moment that that action of having her stand up like that in a committee hearing," said Tlaib.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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