House

Ocasio-Cortez, Crockett call out Mace for Hunter Biden ‘white privilege’ dig

by Lauren Irwin - 01/10/24 4:13 PM ET

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) called out Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) after she took a dig at Hunter Biden’s “white privilege” during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing Wednesday.

Mace made the comment after the president’s son made a surprise appearance in the hearing room as the committee marked up a resolution to hold him in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to testify behind closed doors as part of the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into his father.

“My first question is who bribed Hunter Biden to be here today? That’s my first question. Second question, you are the epitome of white privilege. Coming into the Oversight Committee, spitting in our face, ignoring a Congressional subpoena to be deposed. What are you afraid of? You have no balls to come up here,” Mace said.

Later in the hearing, Crockett, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, criticized Mace for saying Biden showing up represented “white privilege.”

“I just want to run it back through to the very beginning, because this is something that I just can’t get over. I just can get over the gentlelady from South Carolina talking about white privilege,” Crockett said. “It was a spit in the face, at least of mine as a Black woman, for you to talk about what white privilege looks like, especially from that side of the aisle.”

“Ya’ll don’t know what white privilege looks like,” she said.

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Mace defended herself, saying she was previously a ranking member of the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee and takes “great pride as a white female Republican to address the inadequacies in our country.”

Mace said she comes from a district where “rich and poor is literally Black and white, Black versus white on most days.”

Ocasio-Cortez noted that though Mace helped lead the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee, she also helped disband it when Republicans took majority in the House.

Mace’s speech was “very beautiful,” Ocasio-Cortez, said, but it is “exemplary of the point that she also oversaw the elimination of the civil rights subcommittee on this committee, which really kind of gives the whole game away.”

“We show up, we give speeches, we give flowery words, but at the end of the day, participate in the structural erosion of the rights and representation of people that are marginalized — women, people of color, people that just need to see their due process and civil liberties protected in this country,” Ocasio-Cortez said.