Jayapal on Chevalier's Pro-Marxist, Communist Statements: 'Big Tent Means Big Tent'

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) responded to past statements by Democratic U.S. House nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier praising Communism and Marxism by saying that “Whatever labels you want to attach to it, whatever she said, I believe that we’ve got to understand that big tent means big tent, and voters have to be respected. And so, are there going to be disagreements about language she may have used, and I’m not sure when that language was used, the campaign that I saw was very much about what working people want and deserve.”

Jayapal began by saying that the reason that President Donald Trump is “using Communism” to describe Social Democrats “is because he knows socialism is really popular. So, he’s trying to turn this into Communism, when he knows that the ideas that Social Democrats are running on, that progressives are running on, universal healthcare, universal childcare, making sure that people get paid higher wages, those are incredibly popular. So, he’s trying to attach an ideology to it, a label that isn’t correct.”

Later, host Kaitlan Collins asked, “Our colleagues over at KFILE found that one of the candidates who won in New York last week, Darializa Avila Chevalier — she’s running in New York 13, I believe — she repeated sympathetic references to Communism, Marxist ideology, Soviet figures like Vladimir Lenin. Do you believe that complicates the argument in favor of these candidates who are Democratic Socialists?”

Jayapal answered, “I think Darializa Avila Chevalier ran a campaign that convinced the voters of her district that she would stand up and fight for them. Whatever labels you want to attach to it, whatever she said, I believe that we’ve got to understand that big tent means big tent, and voters have to be respected. And so, are there going to be disagreements about language she may have used, and I’m not sure when that language was used, the campaign that I saw was very much about what working people want and deserve. And I think that that’s really the moment that we’re in. People feel so devastated by housing prices, by the lack of child care, by the lack of healthcare and they want something better, and we should be bold about doing it, not attacking the voters or the candidates who won elections in Democratic primaries.”

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