Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas said in a radio interview Friday he might “settle this Aaron Burr-style” — an apparent reference to the 1804 duel when Burr killed Alexander Hamilton — if GOP holdouts on the Senate health care efforts were men from his home state of Texas rather than women.
“Listen, the fact that the Senate does not have the courage to do some of the things that every Republican in the Senate promised to do is just absolutely repugnant to me,” he told Texas radio host Bob Jones on “Keys 1440 AM.” “Some of the people that are opposed to this — there are some female senators from the Northeast — if it was a guy from South Texas, I might ask him to step outside and settle this Aaron Burr-style.”
Republican Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said last week that they would oppose Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement.
Farenthold said in a statement Monday night that his comment was “clearly tongue-in-cheek.”
“Like the President, I am sick and tired of the left-wing biased media trying to make something out of nothing. This was clearly tongue in cheek,” the statement read. “That being said, I’m extremely frustrated with Senate Republicans who are breaking their promise to the American people to repeal and replace Obamacare.”
Collins responded to Farenthold’s comments in a statement Monday night.
“In 20 years in the Senate, I have had a lot of people make suggestions about how to resolve legislative disputes, but until today nobody had ever suggested a duel,” she said.
