Why Jasmine Crockett calls that launch video a “work of art”
Beyond the launch moment, Crockett talks Obama, succession optics back home, and how she plans to run a fast, turnout-focused Senate campaign.
JASMINE CROCKETT could barely contain her glee.
We were outside the Democratic cloakroom last Tuesday evening after House votes, debriefing about the launch of her Senate campaign 24 hours earlier, which featured a video of her staring directly into the camera as a rapid-fire montage of President DONALD TRUMP’s insults played over her silence, when I asked her to explain her thinking.
“I thought it was a work of art,” she told me while grinning from ear to ear in one of her first interviews on Capitol Hill after the announcement. “One of the things I’ve always done is lean into the trolling. I’ve always flipped it to my advantage.”
While some operatives publicly questioned whether the minimalist, grievance-forward framing was too inward-looking for a statewide electorate beyond the Democratic base, the 44-year-old second-term congresswoman said it was an ideal opportunity to set the tone for a campaign—one she says will approach politics differently than Democrats in the past.
“I don’t think you can really get to the substance that you really need to get to in some very much orchestrated video than you’ve got to get done in a minute,” Crockett added. “But I thought it was important that we start to flip the script and remind people that Trump recognizes our stars a lot of times before we do.”
Crockett acknowledged she launched her campaign later than usual and defied the conventional wisdom of dropping a slick online video followed by a digital fundraising campaign the next morning. Instead, she held a launch event in an auditorium in her district full of supporters.
“I wanted it to be seen that the people were coming because they were excited. And I wanted that excitement and that emotion to be felt, and I wanted it to be authentic,” she said. “And for anyone that was looking for the substance of what it is that I’m doing, or why I’m doing what I’m doing, then they could watch my very, very, very, very, very, very, very long speech where I laid it out. And you just can’t do that in a video.”
In that very, very, very, very, very, very, very long speech, Crockett said she never set out to run for office, but traced her political awakening to watching former President BARACK OBAMA defy doubts about whether the country was ready, arguing that his rise taught her to tune out pollsters, skeptics and historical pessimism and instead stay focused on who was best for the job.
“As I was going back and forth about which way I was gonna go, and the people that were like, ‘Well, no, Texas is not gonna do it. No, Texas not gonna do a Black woman. No, Texas, this, that,’” she said. “I was like, this feels reminiscent, probably, of what President Obama was experiencing, and yet this country elected him at the same age to a higher office than what it is that I’m seeking.” (Crockett told me she hasn’t spoken to Obama, but aides for the two are arranging a conversation to discuss the campaign. A spokesperson for the former president could not be reached for comment.)
Crockett’s pastor, FREDDIE D. HAYNES III, filed to run for her seat hours before the deadline in a move that raises inevitable questions about coordination and succession—even if none occurred. As we saw with Rep. JESUS “CHUY” GARCÍA (D-Ill.) last month, a close ally stepping in at the last minute looks to outside observers less like an organic open-seat scramble and more like a managed handoff, which could invite scrutiny at a moment when Crockett is asking voters to trust her anti-establishment case statewide.
But Crockett said the speculation about backroom coordination is off-base, explaining that talk of her Senate run sparked grassroots chatter—including a petition urging her pastor to run—before she had even announced her candidacy. She added that she initially dismissed it because of how close they are and because she believed he would have called her first. She said the groundswell intensified quickly, prompting him to consider the race only then seriously, and that the entire sequence unfolded rapidly rather than as part of a preplanned coronation.
Still, Crockett has already declared Haynes as her successor because, as she puts it, he’s already been doing a strong voice of opposition to the MAGA right without the title of congressman.
“That was one of my concerns, because life looks a little different when you’re on the outside versus inside. And there definitely has to be an outside-inside type of thing,” she said. “But at the end of the day, I think when people run for elected office, it has to be their decision, and it has to be based upon what they feel like their purpose is in that moment. And I will never tell anybody or try to dissuade anybody from fulfilling what they truly feel like is their purpose.”
As for Crockett’s campaign, she told me it’s all about four words from now on: Get out the vote.
“We heading straight to the polls. The election is over in [78] days. Vote-by-mail applications start on January 1. People can start voting in January. They can go in person middle of February,” she said. “This race is done. So GOTV. Straight-up GOTV.”