Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) criticized the Republican party's choice to send Candace Owens to testify at a House Judiciary hearing on the threat of white nationalism - and used her own words to back it up.
"Of all the people that Republicans could have selected, they picked Candace Owens," Lieu said. "I’m going to let her do the talking. I’m going to play for you the first 30 seconds of a statement she made about Adolf Hitler."
Lieu then played a clip of an interview from February, in which Owens made questionable comments about Adolf Hitler "making Germany great."
"When we say nationalism, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler," Owens said. "He was a national socialist. If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, okay, fine."
The decision to send Owens as a GOP representative at a congressional hearing on hate crimes and white nationalism was bizarre. In addition to her comments about Hitler, Owens is a right-wing extremist who got a hat tip in the New Zealand shooter's manifesto.
Pretty odd choice for a hearing designed to "examine hate crimes, the impact white nationalist groups have on American communities and the spread of white identity ideology" - and Lieu wasn't going to let her off the hook.
"When people try to legitimize Adolf Hitler, does that feed into white nationalist ideology?" Lieu asked Anti-Defamation League executive Eileen Hershenov.
"It does Mr. Lieu," she replied. "I know that Mrs. Owens distanced herself from those comments later, but we expressed great concern over the original comments."
Owens was furious.
But people couldn't find the lie.
Owens didn't take well to having her own words played back to her. "It's pretty apparent that Mr. Lieu thinks black people are stupid," she said, before being shut down by House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler.
"It is not proper to refer disparagingly to a member of the committee," Nadler said of Owens' ad hominem statements about Lieu. "The witness will not do that again."
Lieu won't let Candace Owens forger that her pro-Hitler statements don't have a place in a trial about hate crimes.
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