Rep. William Lacy Clay, a Democrat from Missouri, slammed freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday, saying she unfairly played “the race card” in a spat with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Clay, who is black and faces a primary challenge from a leftist Democrat, made the statement after Ocasio-Cortez accused Pelosi of “singling out” young women of color in the House for targeting fellow Dems on Twitter.
“How dare they try to play the race card at this point,” Clay said Thursday.
“It shows the weakness of their argument. It’s damaging to this party and the internal workings of the Democratic Party.”
Rep. John Lewis, a veteran of the Civil Rights movement, added on Thursday that Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks went “a little too far.”
“We all must work together, pull together for the country’s good,” Lewis, who represents a Georgia district, said. “The great majority of the caucus membership tends to work together and get along. We need to go forward, not backward.”
Earlier Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez clarified her remarks about Pelosi, saying she doesn’t believe the speaker has racial animus toward her and her colleagues, but added that she wants to know why they are being singled out.
“It’s singling out four individuals, and knowing the media environment that we’re operating in, knowing the amount of death threats that we get, knowing the amount of concentration of attention, I think it’s just worth asking why,” she told CNN.
With Post wires