Eyelashes, hair dye and body composition: US lawmakers hurl insults during session

WASHINGTON - Even by the rock-bottom standards of the 118th Congress, the three-hour voting session of the House Oversight Committee on May 16 was perhaps a new low. There was shouting and chaos. There were insults about eyelashes, hair dye and body composition. It was behaviour that would get most elementary school children suspended.

The members of the Republican-led committee gathered after 8pm in a Capitol Hill hearing room, ready for a fight – some members of the audience were even said to have brought alcoholic beverages to enjoy the show. They had gathered so late because many Republicans had travelled to Manhattan to show support for former president Donald Trump at the courthouse where he is on trial on criminal charges involving hush money payments to a porn actor.

Back in Washington, lawmakers were ostensibly meeting for the most serious and sombre of reasons: to debate whether to hold a Cabinet official in contempt of Congress. Republicans were recommending charging Attorney-General Merrick Garland – an action that the committee chair, Representative James Comer of Kentucky, proudly touted in a fund-raising appeal earlier in the day – and they would eventually get to that.

But first, it was time for fight club.

Who better to instigate the chaos than Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the right-wing Georgia Republican best known for her penchant for incendiary statements and stunts? Her first target was Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas, who frequently takes on Ms Greene in the committee.

After an initial back and forth, Ms Greene went after Ms Crockett’s appearance, causing all hell to break loose.

“I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” Ms Greene said.

“That’s beneath even you, Ms Greene,” shot back Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the panel.

The remark prompted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the committee’s No. 2 Democrat, to demand that Ms Greene’s words be “taken down” from the record, an official rebuke that would mean Ms Greene would be barred from speaking for the rest of the session.

“How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person?” Ms Ocasio-Cortez said. She later said on social media that she had felt compelled to defend Ms Crockett, who is black, against “racism and misogyny”.

“Are your feelings hurt?” Ms Greene responded.

“Oh baby girl, don’t even play,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez shot back.

Ms Greene later agreed to have her words stricken from the record but refused to apologise. “I am not apologising,” she insisted.

Mr Comer, who has said in the past that he cannot control Ms Greene, ultimately refused to enforce the committee’s rules on decorum.

The entire scene captured the depths to which the oversight panel has sunk during this Congress, as Republicans have tried without success to build

an impeachment case against President Joe Biden,

sometimes resorting to tactics that are outrageous even for a committee that has long been among the most combative on Capitol Hill.

Ms Greene has previously used her perch on the panel to display nude photos of the President’s son engaging in sex acts.

“The major problem was that we allowed pornography in this committee, and we’ve gone down a bad road,” Mr Raskin complained on May 16.

Committee members did little to conceal their contempt for one another.

“Why don’t you debate me?” Ms Greene said to Ms Ocasio-Cortez.

“I think it’s self-evident,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez replied.

“Yeah, you don’t have enough intelligence,” Ms Greene said.

That second insult prompted more outrage, with multiple Democrats demanding Ms Greene retract her remarks.

“That’s two requests to strike!” Ms Ocasio-Cortez said.

The fighting continued, but Ms Crockett was not about to allow Ms Greene’s original insult to go unanswered.

Couching her own jab in a procedural question allowed under committee rules, Ms Crockett inquired of Mr Comer: “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?”

“A what now?” Mr Comer said.

Frequently, there was so much shouting and cross-talk, it was impossible to tell who was saying what and from which direction the insults were being flung.

“I’m just glad the chairs are too big to throw,” one lawmaker could be heard saying amid the cross-talk.

Mr Comer complained of his poor hearing ability and asked the members if they would please consider not shouting over each other.

“I think my body’s pretty good,” Ms Greene, a CrossFit devotee who often posts videos of herself working out, said at one point.

The insults were not just limited to Ms Greene and Ms Crockett. They flowed freely throughout the night across party lines. Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida at one point called Democratic Representative Dan Goldman of New York a “trust fund kid”. He is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.

Ms Greene’s boyfriend, Mr Brian Glenn, the conservative Right Side Broadcasting Network host, defended her honour on social media.

“She’s beautiful, intelligent, and has more class than you’ll ever have,” he wrote, tagging Ms Crockett and Ms Ocasio-Cortez.

Only one Republican sided with the Democrats in attempting to silence Ms Greene: Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, herself a rabble-rouser but one who has little respect for Ms Greene.

“I just want to apologise to the American people,” said Ms Boebert, who apologised in September after being captured on video vaping and being disruptive with her date in a theatre.

“When things get as heated as they have, unfortunately, it’s an embarrassment on our body as a whole.” NYTIMES