By Douglas V. Gibbs
In the age of instant headlines and viral soundbites, accuracy doesn’t matter to Democrats. Perception is everything, and they know that usually all they need to do is plant seeds of doubt. Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett demonstrated this all too clearly when she falsely accused Republicans of taking campaign donations from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Crockett leveled her accusations against Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin, former Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). The claim was explosive, and nowhere near the truth. The donations in question came not from the disgraced child-sex human trafficker, but from a self-employed physician who happens to share the same name.
Rather than owning up to the mistake, Crockett attempted to soften the blow by insisting she had said “a Jeffrey Epstein,” as though that distinction excused the implication. She then shifted blame to her staff, claiming they only had twenty minutes to search Google before she made the accusation.
“My team looked into this quickly,” Crockett said. But when an allegation this serious is being leveled, shouldn’t the details be correct?
Crockett further defended herself by arguing she wasn’t lying, since Zeldin did receive donations from a Jeffrey Epstein. “At least I wasn’t trying to mislead people,” she said. Yet the contex, Epstein’s notoriety and death in 2019 made her framing misleading at best, reckless at worst.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show the physician named Jeffrey Epstein donated $750 to Zeldin’s congressional campaign on April 24, 2020, and $250 on August 31, 2020; both donations occurring a year after the sex offender’s death in a Manhattan jail cell.
The same individual also donated twice to Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, with contributions of $250 each. No evidence connects these donations to the infamous Epstein.
So why did Crockett make such a claim? Because she knew she could get away with it. In today’s political climate, planting seeds of suspicion can be more powerful than facts. Once the accusation is made, many voters will remember the headline, not the correction.
It raises a troubling question: if one were to conduct a “man on the street” interview, how many people would now believe Republicans took money from Jeffrey Epstein simply because Crockett said so?
This episode underscores the danger of careless accusations in politics. Crockett’s refusal to fully acknowledge her error, coupled with her attempt to deflect responsibility, reveals a troubling disregard for truth. In a time when trust in institutions is already fragile, such reckless rhetoric only deepens division and misinformation.
It was almost as stupid, and as dangerous, as the video of the six congressional Democrats encouraging members of the military and intelligence community to sabotage Trump from within by refusing to follow their chain of command, and follow lawful orders. By the way, after accusing Trump of issuing unlawful orders, when Martha MacCallum challenged Representative Jason Crow what unlawful orders were issued by Trump, Crow folded into word salads faster than Kamala Harris in a high stakes poker game.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
