RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/jasmine-crockett-genuine-counterfeit/

Several months ago, I delivered what I still believe to be an accurate assessment of Dallas-area Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, the well-educated scion of a middle-class family turned camera-hungry vulgarian: She was a phony with a foreordained future, one I supported for very cynical reasons. Crockett’s relentless quest for notoriety seemed inevitably destined to come into conflict with the best interests of the Democrats as a party. Crockett can rise no higher in Texas politics — Texans are more likely to elect the ghost of Santa Anna as governor rather than a BLM activist turned progressive gadfly — so her career in Congress is reduced to that of a publicity-seeker, who can only succeed at the expense of greater party discipline and message control.

So far, so good for Jasmine. Spotting a market opening, she decided to make her national brand as a trash-talking gutter queen, the “sassy progressive black woman” analogue to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “obstreperous MAGA populist lady.” (I use scare quotes around these characterizations because I very much believe both of them to be acts.) She has been successful at this. It is in fact fitting that she made her first big public splash by engaging in a classless congressional catfight with Greene, denouncing her “bleach-blonde bad-built butch body” in response to Greene’s equally trashy dig about Crockett’s false eyelashes.

Merely recounting the incident fills me with despair; John Fetterman disgustedly characterized it as akin to a taping of The Jerry Springer Show, providing the rare opportunity for a man who shows up for Senate business in a hoodie and shorts to raise a fair point about congressional decorum. Meanwhile, Crockett trademarked the phrase (she refers to it as “B6”) and sells it on shirts. Crockett, forever on the hunt for the next viral incident, topped herself a year later, in March 2025, when she gave a speech to the Human Rights Campaign in which she insulted Texas Governor Greg Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels.” (Abbott is a paraplegic.)

It was then that I wrote the assessment mentioned above, with a fitting title: “Jasmine Crockett Is Tacky and Classless, and I Encourage This.” In response, I heard from some of the more predictable quarters of the left, which said that Crockett’s sass and combativeness was in fact quite appealing to them. (“She fights!”) I chuckled inwardly because, knowing who was saying this to me, I thought, “Well, of course you would. You are the target market. I am not.”

It seems that The Atlantic is aware of this phenomenon as well, and it recently published a wonderfully revealing in-depth profile of Crockett. The piece, by Elaine Godfrey, deserves to be read rather than summarized, because Crockett reveals a good deal about herself with her own words.

But I will say this: Boy, does this lady ever seem to believe in herself. We learn that Crockett spends most of her day monitoring her various social media accounts obsessively and dressing for “public performance” (including sporting fingernails painted “R E S I S T”). In a detail that speaks inadvertent volumes, we discover that, while the “lock screen” on your smartphone might be a picture of your partner or your kid, the one on Crockett’s is a glamour shot of herself.