In May, a House Oversight Committee hearing took a turn into reality TV territory when Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene made a personal jab at Dallas Democrat Jasmine Crockett. “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” Greene said. It looked as though the committee was about to devolve into fisticuffs. Then, moments later, Crockett, under the guise of asking a question, fought back at Greene. “If someone in this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde, bad built, butch body,” she asked, “that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”
Overnight, quite literally, a political star was born. A clip of their exchange—which also featured Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, reprimanding Greene with a “baby girl, don’t even play”—quickly made the rounds on social media. (This past weekend, the moment got a shout-out on Saturday Night Live, with Ego Nwodim depicting the Dallas lawmaker in a parody segment called “Jasmine Crockett’s Mean-Girl Cam.”) That dust-up, though, is just one of many that has raised Crockett’s profile. Since entering Congress in January 2023 the Democrat has been brought into the spotlight, marked by a charismatic personality and no-nonsense attitude. In late August, she was named the national cochair of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. “I love her. I’ve got her back,” Crockett told Texas Monthly. And, in admitting that she has a tendency to go off script, she says, “I don’t do the talking points. I don’t talk like the rest of the surrogates. I’m going with the real. Let me be me.”
Anyone who followed Texas politics over the last few years knows Crockett didn’t just emerge out of a viral sound bite. Before she joined Congress, Crockett was a member of the Texas House from 2021 to 2023. During her first legislative session, the civil rights and criminal defense attorney filed 75 solo bills; she became a prominent voice for the party in 2023, too, when Texas Democrats fled the state to stall the passage of a restrictive voting law. In between her various travel obligations for Harris’s presidential campaign (she spent Friday night in Philadelphia before coming back to Dallas, on Saturday, for a full slate of events), Texas Monthly spoke with Crockett about her relationship with the vice president, her time in Congress, and how she manages virality.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Texas Monthly: At the Democratic National Convention, you talked about bursting into tears the first time you met Kamala Harris, because she could sense you were feeling uneasy about coming to Washington, D.C., and asked you what was wrong. You basically introduced yourself to the nation by talking about crying. Tell me about that choice.
Crockett: I don’t know that it really was a choice. Essentially, I was notified that they wanted me to speak on Monday during a prime-time slot. They also told me I had a speechwriter who would be in touch with me. That speechwriter gave me an assignment of what I was to talk about, and they do that so everybody’s not talking about the same thing. At first, I was told that they wanted me to focus on the contrasts between a prosecutor running against a convicted felon. But then my speechwriter asked me, what is it that you talk about on the trail?
I told them I had recently gone to Atlanta and was speaking to very influential organizers there. The initial polling we got after Harris became the presumptive nominee showed that, even though there was a ton of excitement on the ground, people felt like they didn’t know Harris. Even several organizers on the ground said they’ve never had a chance to meet Harris. The way I interpreted the poll, then, was that people know who Kamala Harris is, but they don’t quite feel an attachment to her. So I wanted to share my story because I wanted listeners to better understand who she was. The speechwriter also encouraged me to tell the personal story about how I first met Harris, which, honestly, was shocking to me at first. My story might seem unique, but, in reality, Harris has been a longtime, behind-the-scenes mentor. She’s reached out to and touched so many women—myself included.
TM: What advice has she given you?
Crockett: We met in February 2023. So, at that point, I had only been in Congress for a little over a month. But I met Harris because the Congressional Black Caucus was invited to the vice president’s home for Black History Month. Even though there were colleagues all around me, they didn’t know me well at all, either. They couldn’t perceive that I was having these issues. It was interesting, though, that Harris could easily see that there was something wrong. She saw right through me at that moment and proceeded to lift me up. She told me, “Don’t let them ever see you sweat,” along with other words of encouragement, like how the people of Dallas—and she, too—believed that I could do great things.
At that moment, there was almost a switch-flip. I started to acknowledge that if I’m going to be here, then I’m going to make the best of it. And if the vice president of the United States tells me I can do this, then dang it I can do it. After that, I started being less robotic and started doing what felt natural to me.
TM: Why were you so miserable during your early days in Congress?
Crockett: I knew that having this role was important, and so I should treat it that way, but at the same time, I felt like I could be doing more good back home. So many people believed in me and here I was feeling somewhat ungrateful. At first, I was like “Are you kidding me? We can’t even get a House Speaker?” It was nothing but chaos. I used to tell people all the time that I left the Texas state House—which definitely had its own issues—to level up. But being in Congress, at first, did not feel like a level up. It felt like I was wasting time.
TM: Tell me about how you were approached about being the national cochair of her presidential campaign?
Crockett: I was sitting at U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee’s funeral, in Houston, when I got the call from [the vice president’s] team. The next morning, we got in touch and I was told that the vice president personally wanted to make sure that I was added as a cochair.
I believe that the vice president values loyalty and I was a staunch loyalist to the Biden-Harris ticket. At some point in time, I became the top requested surrogate for President Biden. And I never called on him to step aside—behind closed doors or otherwise. So I think she picked me because of my level of dedication and loyalty, but also because she’s told me, consistently, that I have a gift to be able to connect with people in a very authentic way.
I’ve always been very consistent and I think that the vice president wanted to send a signal to the country, if not the world, that she would be the type of leader who will lift as she climbs. By choosing me, it wasn’t necessarily about how long we’ve been friends, but because she recognized me as someone who is loyal and part of the next generation of leadership. Barack Obama tapped Harris as a cochair and, potentially, was trying to elevate the next generation of leadership. I think that’s how she sees me.
TM: How much of that gig focuses on getting out the Democratic vote in Texas versus focusing on the battleground states?
Crockett: I’m not working in Texas at all. I’m in every battleground. I’ve been to most battlegrounds multiple times. Last weekend, they had me do four events in North Carolina in three different cities, so I crisscrossed the state for sure. And, last Sunday, I was in Atlanta, where I did two events. I also have plans to be in Vegas toward the middle of October. So I am very busy, but I’m definitely not in Texas.
TM: It’s striking that you’re working with her campaign, mostly because you’re a relatively green member of Congress and a member of the minority in one of the least active Congresses we’ve had in more than a century. That must be frustrating.
Crockett: For the most part, yes. I only don’t say I’m completely frustrated, though, because the 117th Congress was able to get a lot of historic legislation passed and I’ve been able to do a lot of good work helping put into effect the legislation that was passed then. [In the 117th Congress, Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and the presidency.] I’ve really tried to take advantage of the good work that was done then.
When it comes to my freshman term in Congress, people might remember me for something that I said during a committee hearing. But the biggest success was getting an ARPA-H Customer Experience Hub to Texas—and in my district. [The various hubs work toward finding medical breakthroughs in treating diseases like Alzheimer’s, cancer, and diabetes; Dallas’s hub, in particular, focuses on conducting clinical trials, capturing data, and driving user testing.] Of the three hubs that were authorized again in the 117th Congress, two went to Democratic-controlled states. I worked in a bipartisan way to make sure that the third location was in my district, and it will be a billion-dollar investment when all is said and done.
TM: How do you run on policy at a time when it is very hard to accomplish anything on a policy level as a Democrat?
Crockett: I think it’s about laying down your markers and letting people know what you could do if you were able to do it. As a Texas woman, abortion is top of mind. When the mifepristone case went through courts, Democratic Representative Dan Goldman, of New York, and I teamed up to work on legislation that would increase access to medically accurate information about abortion so residents in each state would know their abortion laws—and the consequences of breaking them. [The bill was referred to a congressional subcommittee in March and has languished there since.] I think it’s important that people know what you’re fighting for and where your values stand. And then, at election time, you explain to voters why it’s important to have Democrats in control because, if we were, this is the type of legislation we will push forward.
TM: I imagine it can be hard working with some Republicans, though. I say that, in part, because over the summer, there was mounting pressure from some Republican state House legislators for you to resign after you announced your support in April for a resolution that cut Secret Service protections from felons—which would now include former President Donald Trump. What was your thinking on becoming a cosponsor of this resolution?
Crockett: Unfortunately, those people that called for my resignation are tools and, honestly, aren’t equipped to be lawmakers because they don’t know how to read legislation. But there are a couple of things I’d like to address.
Number one is that this is not a resolution; it’s a bill that was filed before Trump was ever convicted of anything. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, decided to bring it up and talk about it and mischaracterize it. And then, because MAGA doesn’t read, they just went off of what she said.
Number two is that the legislation says that if anyone with a Secret Service detail is convicted of a felony and sentenced to prison, then they would not have their detail. I don’t believe we should imprison the Secret Service.
Number three is that when you’re in prison, you’re surrounded by law enforcement. The idea that certain people should have Secret Service protection in addition to that, and that taxpayers would continue to fund this extra protection, is ludicrous. For this bill, the trigger is not a conviction. It has to be a felony, not a misdemeanor. And it has to carry prison time.
Number four is that if someone is entitled to Secret Service protection and ends up in prison, they would be classified in the highest level of protection that anybody can get in a prison. They most likely would be by themselves. They won’t have a bunkmate.
TM: Did the assassination attempts against Trump in July and September make you rethink your support for the bill?
Crockett: No, not at all. In fact, they talk about the difficulty of protecting him in these open-air scenarios, but he would be safer behind bars than he would be out on the golf course. That’s just being honest. Trump would be perfectly safe, in custody, if they put in all of the parameters in place that he needs.
TM: You gained national attention for saying Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who had attacked your physical appearance, had a “bleach blonde, bad built, butch body.” Was that spontaneous?
It definitely wasn’t as spontaneous as most people probably perceived it to be. Essentially, there was a ten-minute window or so of time that took place between her remarks to me and my comments back. After she made her comment to me, she was told that she either needed to apologize to me or would get kicked out of committee. Those were the options and she decided that she wasn’t going to apologize. But Republican Representative James Comer, of Kentucky, who chairs the committee, didn’t want to kick her out because he needed the votes.
Once I realized they were going to overrule me, I looked over at Greene—because we sit in the same row—and, from head to toe, I dressed her down. So I wrote it out and I was trying to get Comer’s attention to ask my question. It wasn’t like I just blurted it out.
TM: When something like that goes viral, are you like, “Yes!” or are you like, “Well, I held my own, but this isn’t what I got into politics for.”
Crockett: I definitely am always shocked at what goes viral and that clip, in particular, went mega viral very, very fast. But, no, I definitely didn’t get into politics for that reason and ultimately I think out of that specific situation, I wanted to take lemons and make lemonade. While it was never the intent and there is no secret sauce to going viral, it ignited something that really needed to be ignited within the Democrats. I constantly hear things like “Democrats are weak” and I think that’s because, in a scenario like that, the average response would be to ignore Greene instead of really beating her back.
I was actually at an event last night and this guy came up and was like, “You don’t know how big of a hero you are.” He pointed out, too, that up until that point, nobody had really taken Greene to task. But if somebody had done it sooner, maybe we could’ve shut her up sooner. Greene is such a bully and so many people really wanted her beat back. And not only did she get beat back, but she got beat back without me violating the rules and with me flexing a level of intellect that she really couldn’t get with. She was trashy and violated the rules and engaged in personalities, so to speak, when she went after me. I, on the other hand, made my remarks in the form of a parliamentary inquiry and never mentioned her name. It was truly a lawyerly moment for me—playing within the rules, but making my point.
TM: Some Republicans have built their brand on social media. Is it a good idea to play tit for tat with politicians who engage in schoolyard taunting?
Crockett: I don’t know if going tit for tat is necessary. Sometimes it only elevates something that other people wouldn’t even see. For example, I responded to the idiots in Texas calling on me to resign once—just to go off. But I have four hundred thousand followers on Twitter; I’m not playing with a guy who has four thousand. For them, it’s a game and it’s clout-chasing, but I’m not about to elevate those people. I’m going to check you once, and then I’m done. One Republican state House representative, in particular, has tried tagging me multiple times to poke the bear but I’m done with him. I said what I said and I’m not going back and forth.
TM: Is virality the new currency of politics?
Crockett: Oh, absolutely. When you’re in a body of four hundred and thirty-five legislators, people don’t know who you are. It’s still kind of beyond me that I am a freshman and people know who I am. Even now, with my face being so familiar, it’s a little weird for me because you’re going into your job while all of these cameras are rolling and nobody here signed up to be a celebrity. In a way, it’s like reality TV. There are some downsides to this— going viral means that a lot of people see you, but not necessarily translate to mean that a lot of people love you. You get the love and the hate.
But I don’t plan to go viral. It’s an organic thing that either happens or it doesn’t. It’s weird because it’s usually the unadulterated, unfiltered, and raw moments that are somehow going viral. There has been a shift in politics to not be so rehearsed and to be more authentic. I think people are picking up on my authenticity and that’s what’s driven the viral moments.
