Freshman Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) triggered an uproar on Twitter after condescendingly offering to arrange a security explanation to a critic of President Donald Trump’s border wall proposal. The woman he aimed to school, Juliette Kayyem, is a national security expert and former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.
After news Thursday about a record confiscation of illegal fentanyl at the border, Kayyem pointed out that the drugs, hidden in a commercial truck, were seized at a border port of entry — just as most illegal drugs come into the nation. So a wall would not have made any difference.
Crenshaw piped up that he happened to be at the border and offered to put Kayyem “on the phone” with a border official so that Kayyem could understand the situation and “properly inform” her students at Harvard.
Kayyem told Crenshaw, who has been in office less than a month, that it might be a good idea to “check my bio” before being so “condescending,” adding, “I’ve dealt with that he man stuff a lot.”
Stunned Twitter followers, including Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and CNN’s Joan Walsh, were only too happy to pile on Crenshaw for mansplaining.
Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who lost an eye in Afghanistan, was the butt of a joke late last year by Pete Davidson on “Saturday Night Live” that mocked Crenshaw’s eye patch. After a furor over the joke, Davidson personally apologized to Crenshaw on a following episode. Crenshaw said after the joke that he tries “hard not to offend.” Twitter remembered.
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