MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The same night President Biden bowed out of the race for reelection and threw his support to Kamala Harris, more than 44,000 people jammed into a Zoom call to talk about how to support her. Organized by a Black women's leadership group, on the call were elected officials, as well as actresses, authors and activists and just interested voters. And in just a few hours, they raised $1.5 million for Harris' campaign. Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas was on that call, and we're going to ask her about it. Good morning, Congresswoman.
JASMINE CROCKETT: Good morning.
MARTIN: Why do you think the vice president's potential candidacy is generating so much excitement to the point where I understand that they actually had to call the COO of Zoom to get so many people into the chat room?
CROCKETT: Yeah. We may have broken the Guinness World Record on the number of people that are on a Zoom at one time. Listen - I think that what you are seeing is unity personified, not dictated about, but actually, we see it living and breathing in the fact that you had women from all different backgrounds that came together to support this woman. This, in my opinion, is the time of the woman. As we've seen as these valid measures have come through the various states regarding access to abortion, we have seen women come to the forefront and really show out - but also just the historic nature of this. And finally, we're talking about Trump's worst nightmare, right? I think it is the match up that everybody wanted to see, except for Trump, right? Yet another prosecutor taking him to task.
MARTIN: I understand that part of your message on the call was that, yes, you can celebrate, and you want to be part of this historic moment, but this can't be taken for granted. What did you mean by that?
CROCKETT: Yeah. I believe in work. I made that clear as I was out there on the trail fighting for the Biden-Harris ticket overall. It is a matter of we can't sit here on our laurels and get drunk off the Kool-Aid. You know, we've had a great couple of first days, but this is going to take a lot of work. We are still trying to do something that's never been done in so many ways - number one, having to run a presidential campaign in this short amount of time. Number two, we're talking about having to deal with the misogyny that we are going to have to deal with.
So we need to make sure that we're going to be great messengers for her. We're going to have to be in defense of her consistently because the attacks have already started to roll in. And we're going to have to tell the true story about her record and make sure that the misinformation and disinformation doesn't end up permeating and hurting her like we saw in 2016 with Hillary Clinton.
MARTIN: OK. She's been elected statewide in California three times before becoming vice president. But as I think you probably know, coming from the South, California is often kind of used as a foil in other parts of the country. People portray it as a place that's unlike other parts of the country. As a person who represents another part of the country, is there something you think the vice president specifically needs to do to broaden her appeal?
CROCKETT: I don't think that there's anything that she really needs to do to broaden her appeal. I think what needs to be done is that more people have to get to know her just in general and know the real her, the her that I've had the ability to sit down and have dinner with and just have real conversations with. I think that they need to know that this is the type of woman that literally, on the day of this historic announcement, for some reason, decided that it was worthwhile to call a freshman member of Congress and to say thank you.
MARTIN: She called you? That's you?
CROCKETT: She called me. Yeah.
MARTIN: What do you draw from the fact that she took the time to call you in that moment?
CROCKETT: I think that Kamala - you're going to make me cry. Listen. I'm really at a loss for words because I know how hard it is to be a Black woman in leadership, for sure, especially political leadership. But at the end of the day, what she said to me was, thank you. And to me, what it means is that she understands where her village resides. She knows she never had to call me. And I will be the fierce defender of the vice president that I plan to be until November and beyond. But she understands the importance of village, and she also understands that that call probably did more for me than it will ever do for her. And that's OK. And I think that that's how she governs. She does more for others than it probably will ever do for her.
MARTIN: That's Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. She's a Democrat from Texas. Congresswoman, thank you so much for speaking with us.
CROCKETT: Absolutely. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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