Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) offered no apology for calling fellow House Republicans “terrorists” during the chaotic multiple votes leading up to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) being elected to speaker of the House.
In an appearance on Fox News on Saturday, Crenshaw did make clear that he wasn’t literally referring to his colleagues as terrorists, but he did offer a blunt warning when specific criticism from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was brought up by host Neil Cavuto.
“He’s called American citizens terrorists multiple times, so I don’t know if he really wants to play that game,” Crenshaw said of Cruz.
Cruz was one of a number of Republicans to raise alarms about rhetoric deployed by Crenshaw and others in regards to McCarthy’s House Republican opponents, such as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who unofficially led the effort to oppose McCarthy multiple times in order to gain multiple concessions and rules changes.
Crenshaw was especially irate about the public in-fighting, at one point declaring that the party can’t “let the terrorists win.” On Saturday, Crenshaw was defiant against Cruz and others, but he did claim he does not actually view Gaetz and others as “terrorists.”
“Look, I do not think these people are terrorists to the extent that my colleagues took offense to that,” Crenshaw said. “I’ve gone up to them and said, ‘of course I didn’t mean it that way.’ We were speaking in terms of a very difficult negotiation where sometimes you use a turn of phrase about not giving into terrorists.”
Crenshaw also revealed he actually doesn’t disagree with much of the concessions McCarthy’s opponents managed to get, claiming his frustration was in response to the negotiations not getting done earlier before Republicans found themselves in a temporary time loop.
“The only thing I disagree with them on is how long it could have taken to get to this point,” he said. “This rules package that we’ve agreed on, these processes that we’ve agreed on, these are very agreeable things. They will make it more difficult, but that’s what we want.”
Among the concessions are a lower threshold to make a motion to remove the speaker, 72 hours for members to read bills, and commitments on ending Covid-related mandates and border security funding.
Watch above via Fox News
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