Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) on Thursday night made an emotional plea to her fellow lawmakers to take the deadly Capitol insurrection that ex-President Donald Trump incited on January 6 seriously, recounting the hate she’s had to face as one of the first Muslims to be elected to Congress.
“This is so personal. This is so hard because as many of my colleagues know, my closet colleagues know, on my very first day of orientation, I got my first death threat,” Tlaib said while in tears on the House floor. “It was a serious one. They took me aside, the FBI.”
“I didn’t even get sworn in yet and someone wanted me dead for just existing,” she continued. “More came later. Uglier, more violent.”
Tlaib recalled threats that mentioned her son by name and celebrated the New Zealand mosque massacre that was carried out by a white supremacist in 2019.
“Each one paralyzed me each time,” the congresswoman said. “So what happened on January 6, all I could do is thank Allah I wasn’t here. I felt overwhelming relief.”
Tlaib described how she worries “every day” for her diverse staff and that she “never thought that they would feel unsafe here.”
“And so I urge my colleagues to please, please take what happened on January 6 seriously,” she said. “It will lead to more death and we can do better. We must do better.”
Tlaib’s speech came after the House voted to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (D-GA) of her committee assignments over her ties to deranged conspiracy theories, along with her extremist and violent rhetoric, some of which was directed at Tlaib. All but 11 Republicans effectively sided with Greene by voting against her removal from the committees.
Right before the vote, House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) brought out a printout of a digital poster from Greene’s campaign showing the then-candidate holding a gun next to images of Tlaib, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Rep. Ilhan Omar (R-MN), who is the first member of Congress to wear a hijab.
“They are people,” Hoyer said of the three women. “They are colleagues.”
In the aftermath of the Capitol siege, Republicans have largely attempted to sweep the attack (and Trump’s role in it) under the rug with jaw-dropping calls to simply “move on”. Additionally, a majority of House Republicans voted against impeaching Trump while a majority of their GOP colleagues in the Senate voted against holding an impeachment trial.
Watch Tlaib below:
'On my very first day of orientation, I got my first death threat': Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib makes an emotional plea to take the January 6 Capitol attack seriously pic.twitter.com/297PIkZvlQ
— Reuters (@Reuters) February 5, 2021
How as an elderly white Jewish American can I not weep alongside this young lady for the fear and violence that the right-wing promotes. Yet all my neo-Nazi-coddling Republican friends tell me that I should hate Muslims and Dems.
One of my also elderly close cousins was among those slaughtered in the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh. This was the worst attack on Jewish people since the European settlement of North America began. It wasn’t Muslims who pulled the trigger. It was a Trump-inspired amateur neo-Nazi. He was screaming out lies he heard from the President of the United States and House Minority Leader McCarthy about the Central American caravan and about Jewish support for it. Republicans are lying racist scum who coddle neo-Nazi Jew killers…just as they coddle the racist anti-Semite violence-promoting Marjorie Greene.
A noble sentiment, which will go completely unheeded by the GQP
We must do better in Michigan to rid ourselves of these violent, bigoted, racist militia members.
The death threats and attacks are a direct result of four years of encouragement by Fox and the White House, and by the FBI allowing fascist organizations to operate freely. J Edgar would approve.
I watched all the Dem speakers after the vote to get rid of the Greene House gasbag. About 6 lawmakers called upon by AOC mostly to talk about their experience on the 6th and to thank Capitol Police for their efforts to keep them safe. A lot of the speeches were pretty moving, but Tlaib’s was really touching to see her in absolute tears of distress yet she continued to talk.