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Three Things That Stand Out in Jasmine Crockett's Atlantic Profile Piece

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  July 29, 2025 6:30 AM

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) is a barrel of laughs. She’s feisty and doesn’t take any crap from the GOP. She’s perfectly willing to allow her detractors to view her as mentally ill. She’s ready to deliver haymakers—the problem is that her trainer is trash. The Atlantic did a lengthy profile piece on the Democratic congresswoman, some of which is run-of-the-mill Americana: she was educated privately, reportedly subjected to racism in college, got interested in the law because of those incidents, and went about building her profile by defending Black Lives Matter defendants. She had a brief stint in the Texas legislature before sharking her way up to Congress.

It’s a ping-pong article—there are glowing excerpts about her from friends and colleagues alike, followed by some curt exchanges with her staffers, and then intraparty forces likening her methods to becoming dangerously close to arson. Yet, some details are unintentionally hilarious.  

The three that The Daily Caller’s Amber Duke and others picked up on were as follows: Jasmine Crockett’s lock screen is a picture of herself, she tried to kill the piece when she learned the publication was reaching out to her colleagues, and she felt her social media following should’ve led to her cruising to victory for the ranking seat on House Oversight. In all, the piece is sort of a mixed bag. Whether intentional or not, the publication sort of makes the case that it’s more likely that Crockett might hoist with her own petard than achieve higher office [emphasis mine]:

Perhaps inadvertently, Crockett seemed to be acknowledging something I heard from others in my reporting: that the forthrightness her supporters love might undermine her relationships within the party. Some of Crockett’s fellow Democrats worry that her rhetoric could alienate the more moderate voters the party needs to win back. 

[…] 

At the Webbys, most of her fellow award winners were celebrities and influencers, but only Crockett received a standing ovation. A week later, Crockett flamed Republicans and the Trump administration during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A 15-minute clip of her upbraiding ICE agents—“These people are out of control!”—has racked up more than 797,000 views on YouTube; I know this because she told me. On TikTok and Instagram, Crockett has one of the highest follower counts of any House member, and she monitors social-media engagement like a day trader checks her portfolio. She is highly conscious, too, of her self-presentation. During many of our conversations, Crockett wore acrylic nails painted with the word RESIST, and a set of heavy lashes over her brown eyes. The lock screen on her phone is a headshot of herself. 

[…] 

The state-House drama was short-lived: After one term, Crockett became the handpicked replacement for 15-term U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson. Crockett sailed to victory, and less than a year later, her breakthrough moment arrived: While questioning a witness in a committee hearing, Crockett held up a photograph of several boxes in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. The classified documents, she said, looked like they were “in the shitter to me!” Trump critics praised her as an “absolute star” and their “new favorite Congresswoman.” 

Not everyone agreed. Johnson felt that the freshman representative was dismissive of her experience and advice, according to two sources familiar with the relationship. “I don’t think it was a secret” that by the time Johnson died, in December 2023, “she had had second thoughts about Jasmine,” the Texas-based Democratic strategist said. Crockett strongly denied this characterization and said that she had never heard it from those close to Johnson. I reached out to Johnson’s son for his view, but he didn’t respond. 

[…] 

Some of Crockett’s fellow Democrats find that candor refreshing. “People don’t necessarily agree with her aggressive communication style,” Representative Julie Johnson of Texas told me. “I’m thrilled she’s doing it, because we need it all.” Garcia, in a statement from his office, told me that Crockett is “one of the strongest fighters we have,” and that, “as a party, we should be taking notes on the kinds of skills she exemplifies.” But several other Democrats I reached out to about the race [for ranking member of House Oversight] seemed uninterested in weighing in. Thirteen of her colleagues on the Oversight and Judiciary committees, along with 20 other Democratic members I contacted for this story, either declined to talk with me on the record or didn’t respond to my interview requests. Senior staffers for three Democratic members told me that some of Crockett’s colleagues see her as undisciplined but are reluctant to criticize her publicly. “She likes to talk,” one of the staffers said. “Is she a loose cannon? Sometimes. Does that cause headaches for other members? 100 percent.” 

Crockett said that people are free to disagree with her communication style, but that she “was elected to speak up for the people that I represent.” As for her colleagues, four days before this story was published, Crockett called me to express frustration that I had reached out to so many House members without telling her first. She was, she told me, “shutting down the profile and revoking all permissions.” 

If you can’t take a little dissent from your colleagues and in The Atlantic no less, you’re not going to go far. What is she so afraid of? That this piece would blow up her spot. Given the insanity that’s gripped the Democratic Party and the base’s lust for someone who would perform the equivalent of political kamikaze runs at the GOP, she’s going to be fine. And thank God—we need to make this woman the face of the Democratic Party for years to come.  

Also, like with most criticisms of the Democratic Party, being too online is one that’s nailed to Crockett’s forehead. Obviously, it’s what she says that scared her Democratic colleagues away from endorsing her for the ranking position on House Oversight—her social media following, while extensive, played no role. In general, most people don’t know who their member of Congress is, so why would this be some super grease to glide to a win? It’s also a massive echo chamber, but you know this already.  

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Crockett is ‘brat,’ right? Yeah, I don’t know what the hell that is either, but Kamala Harris was christened with that term by Charli xcx—and she lost big league.  

Also, who is the mystery lawyer that inspired Crockett—no one can find her: 

As Crockett tells it, she became interested in the law after she and a few other Black students at Rhodes received anonymous letters containing racist threats. The school hired a Black female attorney from the Cochran Firm, a national personal-injury-law group, to handle the case, Crockett told me. The attorney became Crockett’s “shero,” she said, and inspired her to attend law school herself. When I asked for the name of her shero so that I could interview her, Crockett told me that she did not remember. I reached out to a former Cochran Firm attorney in Tennessee who fit Crockett’s description; she remembered the incident in broad terms but was not sure if she had worked on the case or with Crockett. Although Rhodes College had no specific records of the incident, two people who worked at the college at the time told me that they recalled it.