WASHINGTON – Rep. Ted Lieu was not happy that his Republican colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee invited conservative commentator Candace Owens to speak at a hearing on the rise in hate crimes and white nationalism.

To explain why, the California Democrat pulled out his smartphone and played a clip of Owens making some controversial comments about Adolf Hitler.

"In congressional hearings, the minority party gets to select its own witnesses. And of all the people Republicans could have selected, they picked Candace Owens," Lieu said during the Tuesday hearing.

"I don't know Ms. Owens. I'm not going to characterize her. I'm going to let her own words do the talking," he said.

In the clip, Owens, the communications director for Turning Point USA, explains that she thinks the word "nationalism" has been "poisoned" by "elitists that actually want globalism" and who conflate the word with Hitler's Nazi agenda.

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"You know, he was a National Socialist, but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, okay fine," she said. "The problem is he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German."

Lieu did not ask Owens to respond, but rather asked another panel member, Eileen Hershenov from the Anti-Defamation League, "When people try to legitimize Adolph Hitler, does that feed into white nationalist ideology?"

"It does, Mr. Lieu," Hershenov replied. "I know that Ms. Owens distanced herself from those comments later but we expressed great concern over the original comments."

In February, Owens had tried to clarify her comments, which had then gone viral. She explained that she considered Hitler "a homicidal, psychotic maniac" and that her point was that he was not a nationalist. But she added, "I stand by my statements. And that is that.”

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"I think it's pretty apparent that Mr. Lieu believes that black people are stupid and will not pursue the full clip in its entirety," Owens said Tuesday when she did get a chance to respond. "He purposely presented an extracted clip."

Her response prompted a rebuke from Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., who mistakenly thought she had called Lieu "stupid."

"I didn't refer to him as stupid, that's not what I said. That's not what I said at all. You didn't listen to what I said," Owen said, prompting a shrug from Nadler.

Owens then continued, saying Lieu was "trying to present as if I was launching a defense of Hitler in Germany when, in fact," she was trying to say that Hitler should not be characterized as a nationalist.

"A nationalist would not kill their own people," she said.

She said Lieu was trying to "create a narrative" and that it was "similar to what they do to Donald Trump."