Two Black Democrats have hit back at Vice President JD Vance after he took swipes at them during his remarks at a conservative conference over the weekend.
At Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix on Sunday, Vance mocked Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and her recently announced Senate campaign, saying that Crockett’s “street-girl persona is about as real as her nails.” Crockett, who has frequently gone viral and stoked controversy as she clashed with GOP foes, later slammed Vance for having used “racist tropes” and said Republicans feared her authenticity.
In his speech to the conservative youth organization, Vance also ridiculed Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh (D), the son of Somali immigrants who recently ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Minneapolis.
“[Democrats] are not sending their best. Omar Fateh was … candidate for mayor of Mogadishu,” Vance said, referring to the capital of Somalia, before adding: “What, I mean Minneapolis. Little Freudian slip there.”
In response, Fateh defended his Somali roots, noting in an X post that his father had immigrated to the United States on a scholarship in the early 1960s and earned a master’s degree in engineering. He included an image of an old newspaper article about his father working on a highway construction project in Vermont.
“Nice try @JDVance… I was born in DC and proud to represent [Minneapolis] in the MN Senate,” Fateh wrote Sunday. “Looks like you took time … to try out comedy.”
Meanwhile, Crockett, an attorney and former public defender, sharply criticized Vance in an interview with MS NOW on Sunday.
“I’m sorry, but anybody that you talk to knows my credentials. They know that I’ve gone to school. They know that I’m educated. I never tried to put on some random story about where I came from, but at the end of the day, I am who I am, and I am authentic. And that is actually what they are fearful of, is my authenticity,” Crockett said.
Crockett added that Republicans were “scared” and challenged them to a policy discussion, noting that Texas’s two GOP senators — John Cornyn and Ted Cruz — recently voted against extending subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.
“I don’t have time for [Vance] and their games. … I’m not going to be distracted. And when they can tell me about their policies that are helping Texans, then we can have a conversation,” Crockett said. “Until then, take whatever shots you want to take at me. Because I have been a Black woman my entire life. I promise you, there are other people just like JD Vance, who have tried to do the same racist tropes my entire life, and somehow I ascended and became a U.S. congresswoman. It will not be different when I become a U.S. senator, and we can have a conversation when I get to the Senate floor if he wants to talk.”
A representative for Vance did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Vance’s comments about Crockett echo President Donald Trump’s publicattacks on the congresswoman, a longtime and outspoken critic of the Trump administration who centered her campaign launch on being a foil to Trump.
Vance’s comments about Fateh came as the Trump administration has targeted Somali immigrants with degrading rhetoric and ramped-up immigration enforcement in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, which has one of the highest populations of Somali people in the country. Earlier this month, Trump ended a Cabinet meeting with a rant against Somali migrants, comparing them to “garbage.”
“They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, okay?” Trump said then. “Somebody said, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country’s no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country.”
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