Rep. Mondaire Jones Calls GOP Objections to DC Statehood ‘Racist Trash’

GOP House members on Thursday erupted in heated opposition after Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) condemned their objections to Washington, D.C., statehood as “racist trash” during a speech on the chamber floor.

“I have had enough of my colleagues’ racist insinuations that somehow the people of Washington D.C. are incapable or even unworthy of our democracy,” Jones, a progressive first-term lawmaker, said.

His comments triggered an uproar from Republicans on the floor.

“The truth is there is no good faith argument for disenfranchising 700,000 people, most of whom are people of color,” Jones continued as GOP lawmakers called for a point of order.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) asked for Jones to agree to have his remarks stricken from the congressional record.

Harris said in a statement to Forbes that Jones’s statement was “unbecoming of a Representative and violates the rules of the House,” particularly at a “time of growing discord,” and claimed Jones “realized his words were inappropriate.”

After some heated back and forth, Jones, according to Forbes, consented to withdraw the comments from the record and continued with his speech, saying that the GOP’s “desperate objections are about fear.”

“Fear that in D.C. their white supremacist politics will no longer play,” he added. “Fear that soon enough, white supremacist politics won’t work anywhere in America. Fear that if they don’t rig our democracy, they won’t win.”

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