Salazar called Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., a “communist sympathizer” on social media. Democrats say Salazar was suppressing free speech, like the Cuba regime.
Florida Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar refused to allow California Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat, to sit in on House subcommittee hearing because of Lee’s views on Cuba.
That led to criticism that Salazar was acting like the Cuban regime and devolved later into name-calling.
As is often done on Capitol Hill, Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, asked Salazar to allow Lee and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. — neither of whom are committee members — to participate in the Thursday hearing of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The hearing’s focus was to be on the Biden administration’s policies on private business in Cuba.
Lee wanted to provide a statement and listen in to discuss Cuban entrepreneurship, ways to support human rights in Cuba and reinvigorating U.S. relations with Cuba, her office said. Lee has supported normalizing relations with Cuba.
Salazar responded that Wasserman Schultz was “more than welcome, Barbara Lee is not.”
If it’s not classified I didn’t think you were allowed to exclude members of Congress FROM Congress.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a statement issued after she was denied attendance in the subcommittee, Lee called the expulsion “another example of the extreme GOP suppressing freedom of speech and diversity of opinion.” She warned that “if we don’t push back against this silencing, we risk becoming governed by misinformation and wanna-be dictators like (former President Donald) Trump — the death of our democracy.”
Her office later told NBC News that “this is not the first time [Lee] has had to deal with being treated differently, as a Black member of Congress.”
“I exercised my authority as Subcommittee Chairwoman to not allow an off-Committee Member to spread communist propaganda during my Cuba hearing," Salazar said in the statement.
The conflict carried on in social media, with Salazar accusing Lee of trying to disrupt the hearing and calling her a communist sympathizer and a mouthpiece for the Cuban regime.
“Your unequivocal support for Fidel Castro, who starved and murdered the Cuban people, is communist propaganda," she said in one of her postings.
A previous version of this story misstated Rep. Salazar’s response to an NBC News request for comment, which was mistakenly sent to a wrong email address.
The original article contains 796 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
K… nowhere gets nowhere gets nowhere. Congratulations on the slap fighting.
