Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Sunday on MSNBC’s Velshi that President Donald Trump should be censured for calling Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) “Pocahontas” during his address to Congress. Raskin argued that Trump’s remark was racially insensitive and a greater violation of congressional decorum than the actions of Rep. Al Green (D-TX), who was removed from the chamber during the speech.
Raskin acknowledged internal criticism within the Democratic Party over the lack of a unified strategy in response to Trump’s address. “It’s a fair criticism. We didn’t have a single strategic plan going into Trump’s address that night—whether it was a boycott, a walkout, or heckling like Marjorie Taylor Greene did to Joe Biden,” Raskin said. He contrasted Biden’s ability to handle interruptions with Trump’s reaction, suggesting Trump lacked “verbal dexterity” and needed security to remove Green.
Defending Green’s outburst, Raskin said the congressman was making an important point about protecting Medicaid, which he claimed lacked a mandate for destruction. “The vast majority of Democrats rejected the idea of censuring him,” Raskin said, before shifting his criticism back to Trump.
“If we were censuring anybody, it should have been Donald Trump,” Raskin argued. “He hadn’t been back to our chamber since he incited a violent insurrection against us. And then he used his pulpit to call a sitting U.S. senator ‘Pocahontas.’”
Raskin described Trump’s comment as a racial slur that insulted the “dignity and decorum” of Congress. The use of the term “Pocahontas” has long been a source of controversy, as Trump frequently used it to mock Warren’s past claims of Native American ancestry.
