The folks that held out on the Speaker vote over Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) managed to achieve a lot including getting agreements, some of which will be voted on Monday as part of the rules vote.

But the battle was a lesson that taught many things. Among those things, it revealed Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) for who he truly is, and it wasn’t a good thing. We saw him call his Republican colleagues all kinds of nasty names, chief among them, “terrorists.” He even said they were the “enemies” for upholding what they felt were their obligations to their constituents and the American people.

Now Crenshaw is trying to clean things up and “apologize.”

First, he went on CNN. Not Fox. So if he was trying to clean things up with the Republican base who is unhappy with him, he wasn’t likely to reach them by going on CNN. So who was he truly trying to clean things up with?

But even in that effort, he was still trying to act like he hadn’t said much of anything and that people were being overly sensitive.

“Look, things get heated and things get said. Obviously, to people who took offense by that, it’s pretty obvious that it’s meant as a turn of phrase,” Crenshaw CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

Crenshaw acted like he couldn’t understand how it could have offended people, saying he was “a little taken aback” by the “sensitivity.”

“To the extent that I have colleagues that were offended by it, I sincerely apologize to them. I don’t want them to think I actually believe they’re terrorists. It’s clearly a turn of phrase that you use in what is an intransigent negotiation,” Crenshaw said.

So a few things for Crenshaw. When you make an apology, you apologize. You don’t take the time to try to justify why you said what you said and claim the people you attacked are being overly sensitive. When you do that, it looks just a bit like your apology is less than sincere and that maybe it’s more about the backlash that you’ve suffered.

But the other thing here is, yes, calling someone a terrorist, isn’t like saying you’re being an intransigent creep. It isn’t just a “turn of phrase.” Neither is “enemy.” Those terms have meaning and when you act like they don’t, again, you’re not being sincere or you’re stupid. Neither one of those things is a good choice here. Even after being told the problem, he was still attacking, as I previously reported.

Unclutch your pearls. It’s a figure of speech. You can’t insult, slander, and hold everyone hostage with no way out – and not expect me to punch back.

Grow thicker skin. https://t.co/gmwDmfCney

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) January 5, 2023

Now he wants to claim that he was in favor of a lot of the things that the objectors were fighting for. He claimed that he was angry because he thought that they had already agreed to things. But obviously, they didn’t have a deal fully reached until at least Friday when most of the objectors including Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) flipped.

Sorry, Dan, I don’t think people are buying it.