MSNBC host Ari Melber noted Thursday that House Democrats started the battle over committee membership by booting Republicans from committee assignments, citing Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s ejection from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi barred Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana from serving on the Jan. 6 Select Committee, prompting a Republican boycott of the panel. House Democrats also voted to strip Republican Reps. Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene of their committee assignments in the 117th Congress. (RELATED: ‘We’re Not Going Away’: Booted Dem Rep Vows McCarthy Will ‘Regret’ Kicking Him Off Intel Committee)
“Speaker Pelosi did boot people off the committee. That is where it started,” Melber told Sam Rodriguez, a Democratic political operative who worked on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, according to LinkedIn. “You can say for better reasons, but once you go down the road of saying you’re going police committees this way, I do think it gets to really difficult tradeoffs.”
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“I would say three things could be true: She made statements that if you’re going to police, what we can call them tropes, hate, right, left wherever they did come from, she did make those statements, Katty [Kay] referred to them. She’s also, of course, tried to address that and apologized for some of them, one,” Melber said. “Two, you look at the situation and you say, there’s a lot of evidence the MAGA party of Trump is targeting her for who she is, what she looks like, just like they did, ironically, to Jews and Catholics and others in different generations, saying, you’re not a, quote real American.’”
The House of Representatives passed a resolution Thursday to remove Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee on a party-line 218-211 vote over previous anti-Semitic remarks. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy refused to allow Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff to serve on the House Intelligence Committee in January.
“And then the third thing can be true and this is where you know you might lose some people, but the third thing that can be true is it was the Democrats who erected a new standard in the last Congress to boot people off a committee. Different reasons, but the third thing is true,” Melber added.
“The idea that Omar can speak clearly and freely of her opinion should be honored,” Rodriguez said after praising Pelosi for being the “most effective” speaker in recent history, and adding that Pelosi was targeting hate speech from Greene and Gosar, which he said justified the removals.
Pelosi did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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