Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s Senate campaign is off to a rocky start — and it’s largely her own words doing the damage.
Just days after announcing her bid to unseat Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, Crockett is facing intense backlash over controversial comments she made about Latino Trump voters, comments she tried — and failed — to spin during a tense CNN interview with Jake Tapper.
CNN: You said Latinos who voted for Trump have a slave mentality…
CROCKETT: That’s not what I said at all. pic.twitter.com/F6yRhEh18h
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) December 10, 2025
The remarks in question come from a 2024 Vanity Fair profile, where Crockett used the phrase “slave mentality” to describe Latinos who support Trump, suggesting that their views on immigration and crime reflect some kind of internalized self-hatred. “It almost reminds me,” she said, “of what people would talk about when they would talk about… the hate that some slaves would have for themselves.”
Now, let’s be clear: that’s not a quote that gets misinterpreted. It’s just inflammatory.
When Tapper pressed her directly — “Do they all have a slave mentality?” — Crockett tried to walk it back. “That’s not what that said at all,” she insisted. But Tapper didn’t budge. “No, but the ones that vote for people who believe in strong immigration policies,” he followed up, calling out the very group she had singled out in the article.
Crockett’s flustered reply? “I don’t believe that the people that voted for Trump believe in what they’re actually getting.”
Translation: she’s now suggesting Latino voters are simply too misinformed to understand their own political choices. That’s not exactly a campaign message that screams respect or persuasion.
Worse, she doubled down in the same interview, claiming that many recent Latino immigrants view illegal immigration through a criminal lens — seeing immigrants as “maybe people that came out of the cartels.” The sweeping generalizations didn’t stop there. She added that it’s “wild” to see immigrants being anti-immigrant — as if support for border enforcement is somehow incompatible with immigrant identity.
FLASHBACK: Jasmine Crockett on Hispanics who voted for President Trump and oppose illegal immigration:
“It’s almost like they have a slave mentality.”
Hispanics are over 40% of the population in Texas and President Trump won them in 2024 by 11 points. pic.twitter.com/jsXBVRQYgM
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 8, 2025
Here’s the political reality: Donald Trump won nearly half of Latino voters in 2024, including a majority of Latino men, according to exit polls. His coalition isn’t shrinking — it’s expanding into demographics once assumed to be safe for Democrats. That’s why Crockett’s comments hit a nerve. Not just because they’re offensive — but because they reveal a dangerous disconnect between the progressive elite and the voters they claim to speak for.
What’s truly ironic is how quickly this language flips depending on the direction of the insult. When some conservatives claim Black Democrats are trapped on the “Democrat plantation,” they are (rightly) called out for demeaning rhetoric and racial condescension. But Crockett seems perfectly comfortable applying a similar framework to Latinos who think differently than she does — only this time, it’s cast as “woke insight” instead of the patronizing insult it is.
This isn’t just tone-deaf. It’s political malpractice.
Texas is not a blue state. It’s not even reliably purple. Any Democrat running statewide already faces an uphill battle. To succeed, they’d need to expand their coalition, not insult a growing segment of voters. Crockett, instead, has launched her campaign by belittling the very people she’ll need to reach.
Crockett’s team may hope this controversy blows over. But the quote is on record. The interview is on video. And for Latino voters in Texas, the message was loud and clear — even if Crockett now wishes it hadn’t been.
