Jasmine Crockett shares what ‘did not go viral’ during clash with Rep. Nancy Mace

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, addressed the “elephant in the room” while accepting an award at the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Breakfast in honor of the civil rights icon.

Crockett, who attended the National Action Network event on Wednesday hosted by the Rev. Al Sharpton at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., acknowledged the viral exchange she had with Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who threatened to fight her during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill.

“What did not go viral was the fact that I was actually sitting there trying to remind my colleagues of the legacy of Dr. King,” said Crockett, who explained that prior to Mace asking her if she wanted to “take it outside,” she was trying to introduce an amendment that would reinstitute the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which Republicans disbanded last year.

As theGrio previously reported, Crockett was debating against the creation of a new subcommittee on “Government Efficiency” to complement President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed White House “department” of the same name, headed by billionaire friend Elon Musk.

“I didn’t pick on nobody. I ain’t start none, OK,” said Crockett of the viral moment. The congresswoman said she was simply trying to point out that the civil rights subcommittee axed by Republicans was important to advancing the civil rights of all Americans, not just Black Americans — which is what she suspected was their reason for eliminating it.

Crockett said she shared with her Republican colleagues a story that Luci Baine Johnson, daughter of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, recently told her as the two sat together on a plane during last week’s events honoring former President Jimmy Carter.

After signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, President Johnson gave one of his signing pens from the historic legislation to a Republican leader in Congress, as he did for Dr. King and several others. When Luci asked her father why he gave a signing pen to a Republican, he said, “These members have a level of courage that means that by voting for the Voting Rights Act, they knew they were not coming back.”

Crockett said she used the story to challenge her Republican colleagues to “channel just a fraction of the courage that members in the House possessed in the 1960s, and allow us to just have the subcommittee on civil rights.” But instead of a debate on civil rights and the legacy of MLK, the congresswoman lamented that the debate divulged into a war of words about trans rights — an issue that Rep. Nancy Mace has championed the loudest in recent weeks.

“It just went to the left,” recalled Crockett, who opined that “the substance of what I was trying to do did not go viral.”

“Every day that I walk in the halls, regardless of whatever rhetoric they put out about me, I am a very serious lawmaker,” she continued. “At the same time, if you threaten me, you will find out.”