Far-right House Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), took a trip this week to visit the Washington, D.C. jail, where a handful of January 6 defendants, accused of high-level offenses like assaulting police officers, are housed. These Republicans claimed that the defendants are effectively political prisoners and victims of mistreatment.
But none of that is true, said Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), who accompanied the Republicans on this trip, and told MSNBC's Ali Velshi what she actually saw on Friday.
"You have seen inhumane conditions," said Velshi. "Bad conditions in prison in America are a real thing. And to the extent that there are members of Congress from both parties who would like to tackle that, it's a separate issue than treating January 6th rioters as political prisoners."
"Yeah, no. This was nothing more than a political stunt," said Crockett. "While you're covering this, that is part of the problem. The media continually gives Marjorie Taylor Greene this microphone to spew nonsense and lies. Essentially what happened today was a field trip, the Republicans got to see their heroes, the January 6ers got to see their heroes. Everybody was kumbaya-ing."
"What's frustrating is the idea that, I think back to Nelson Mandela and what he went through. I actually went to that prison. He was not afforded these opportunities," said Crockett. "These false comparisons that they're drawing, it's really offensive because we have real issues in this country. We have real political prisoners. We saw what happened with Brittney Griner and where the Republican Party was on her, they were against that. They felt like that was problematic. Yet under these circumstances, for whatever reason, they felt like it made sense to have senior colleagues, senior Democrats go in and sit down and talk to and coddle people that tried to kill them. It did not make sense."
"Listen, it's still prison," said Crockett. "Prison is never going to be the Ritz-Carlton. But at the same time we're talking about, are they living in inhumane situations or not? I can tell you, there's nothing inhumane about this. They are able to freely move about. They're able to communicate without having to worry about a recorded phone call. They had air conditioning, which is something we don't have in Texas. They also — I asked about the women in the facility, and I asked them about their access to sanitary napkins. They have that, that's free. Their medical care is free. A lot of places, they charge you for that kind of stuff ... let me tell you something. I've had a client that died. I don't see someone sitting there and being neglected because they're not hurt. They have got literally iPads, or whatever they call them, tablets, where they can make a sick call electronically. And they have access to these tablets for 22 out of 24 hours. The only two hours they don't have access to them when they're charging them."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
Jasmine Crockett slams GOP's "nonsense and lies" about January 6 prisoners www.youtube.com
