After Jasmine Crockett unloaded on Donald Trump and his supporters in perhaps her most pointed critique yet, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt returned fire Thursday in her daily briefing.
Appearing on Katie Couric’s podcast “Next Question,” posted Wednesday, Crockett criticized Trump’s underwhelming military parade, saying “It is really sick. And anybody that supports it is also sick.”
“We’ve got a mental health crisis in this country because everyone, no matter how you affiliate yourself, should be against Trump, period,” the Texas congresswoman said
Of course, half of the country, at best, supports the president and his policies. Leavitt made note of that when asked by a reporter about Crockett’s remarks.
“I think it’s incredibly derogatory to accuse nearly 80 million Americans of mental illness,” said Leavitt, whose made plenty of incendiary remarks herself, mainly at the expense of the journalists who cover the White House “The last time I checked, Jasmine Crockett couldn’t dream of winning such a majority of the public as President Trump did.”
Leavitt agreed with the reporter that Crockett is “a rising star” in the Democratic party.
“It’s quite something to behold, actually,” she said. “I hope that she continues to be a rising star, for the Republican Party at least.”
Republicans, in fact, are eager to make Crockett the face of the Democrats, believing she represents the party’s progressive wing. Her caustic remarks about large swaths of the population aren’t thought to be a winning strategy for a party that many voters find does not represent their values.
Crockett’s willingness to speak her mind draws comparisons to Trump, stylistically, at least. It’s raised her profile considerably, winning her support from a Democratic base weary of the tepid opposition represented by establishment figures such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. They want a fighter, and Crockett has been more than willing to fill that role, accusing the president of being a “racist” and a “thug” and saying if MAGA had its way she’d be “back in chains.”
In fact, it was a fight with another blond Trump acolyte that propelled Crockett into the national consciousness.
During a May 2024 House Oversight Committee session, Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene made a crack about Crockett’s “fake eyelashes,” prompting the second-term Democrat to clapback at the MAGA firebrand’s “bleach blond, bad-built butch body.”
In her rebuke of Crockett, Leavitt defended “the America First movement … filled of hardworking patriots, the forgotten men and women, business owners, law enforcement officers. Nurses and teachers, and middle America, as we all know from where you all grew up, outside of this beltway.
“That’s who makes up this president’s movement,” Leavitt concluded. “And Jasmine Crockett should go to a Trump rally sometime and she can see it for herself.”
Crockett has yet to respond to Leavitt’s comments, but her fans had the congresswoman’s back.
“So it is ‘incredibly derogatory’ for Jasmine Crockett to call MAGAts mentally ill, but it’s totally fine for trump to call Democrats ‘vermin’ and ‘radical left lunatics’”?? wrote one supporter, on X.
Added another, “Rep. Jasmine Crockett isn’t just serving fire in Congress — she’s serving truth, strength, and compassion with every word. She knows how to lead and punch back when it counts.”
Of course, there are plenty of Crockett haters, many responding with racist and or sexist comments too vulgar to share.
“Is Jasmine Crockett arrogant, incompetent, or just stupid?” one opponent posted.
