The week is almost over, and anyone paying attention would’ve expected, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has another week jam-packed with gaffes, lies, and hypocrisy.
All Rhetoric is Dangerous Except for Mine!
Starting off the week, AOC blamed President Donald Trump’s rhetoric after a Louisiana police officer made a post threatening to shoot her on Facebook.
This is Trump’s goal when he uses targeted language & threatens elected officials who don’t agree w/ his political agenda. It’s authoritarian behavior.
The President is sowing violence. He’s creating an environment where people can get hurt & he claims plausible deniability. https://t.co/GuYKPGzSLm
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 22, 2019
While we can reasonably estimate the probability that officer would’ve actually ever harmed AOC at near zero percent, she should know a thing or two about rhetoric inspiring violence. After all, it was she who popularized referring to detention facilities as “concentration camps.” Just last weekend an armed man attempted to storm an ICE facility in Tacoma, Washington and was shot dead before he could harm anyone. The attacker identified himself as part of antifa and echoed AOC’s concentration camp rhetoric four times in his manifesto.
AOC and the members of her so-called “squad” all refused to condemn the attack, outright refusing to answer questions from reporters.
The story has received little coverage in the mainstream media, and I have yet to see a discussion on how “extreme rhetoric” may have influenced his behavior. We’re apparently only supposed to consider the consequences of rhetoric when Trump refers to murderous MS-13 members as “animals.”
Border Patrol Somehow Responsible For Problem Created by Illegal Immigrant
On Monday AOC shared a story that Border Patrol and ICE are detaining American citizens, giving little context in her commentary.
CBP is detaining *American citizens.*
How would you feel trapped in a border camp, where guards wear face masks because the human odor is so strong?
When we allow the rights of some to be violated, the rights of all are not far behind. https://t.co/U4NFQtv8F3
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 23, 2019
There is indeed government bureaucracy at work here considering that it took three weeks to resolve this issue, but CBP’s suspicion was warranted. According to the Washington Post, CBP and ICE held that individual because his mother, who is in the country illegally, applied for a US tourist visa when he was a minor and said he was born in Mexico, which conflicted with information on his documents. His mother also used a fake name on her birth certificate.
The reason it appears to have taken CBP and ICE so long to determine Galicia’s citizenship is because his mother, who is not a citizen, took out a U.S. tourist visa in his name while he was still a minor, falsely saying he was born in Mexico, [Claudia Galan, his attorney] said. His mother, Sanjuana, told The Post that CBP discovered the visa after fingerprinting her son. The conflicting documents only fueled the agency’s suspicion that Galicia’s U.S. documents were fake, Galan said.
Sanjuana said she took out the tourist visa for her son because she saw it as the only way he could travel back and forth across the border to visit family. The undocumented mother was unable to get him a U.S. passport because when Galicia was born, Galan said, she gave a different name for herself on his birth certificate.
A horrible situation for the individual affected – but it was literally caused by an illegal immigrant presumably attempting to commit fraud.
AOC the Comedian
The Congresswoman behind the $93 trillion “Green New Deal” would like you to know that Democrats are the party of fiscal responsibility. She retweeted a post from Bloomberg’s Sahil Kapur claiming that since 1981, the deficit has grown under every Republican president and shrunk under every Democrat.
Of course, that includes “surpluses” like the one under Bill Clinton’s administration, which were only achieved from taking money out of government trust funds to cover his deficits. It’s hardly a surplus when the Visa is being paid off with a Mastercard, and that’s hardly the only problem with Kapur’s shallow analysis.
Example: Obama inherited a 1-year deficit spike ($1.2 trillion as of Jan. 2009) that was projected by CBO to fall to $264 billion by 2012 automatically. Instead he kept it above $1 trillion through 2012. But he's great because it stayed below the original $1.2 trillion? pic.twitter.com/nTKT8kJQbI
— Brian Riedl (@Brian_Riedl) July 24, 2019
Imagine if someone claimed the best way to judge a President's economic record is just by comparing the economic growth rate in Year 1 vs. Year 8. ("he added growth!") They would be mocked. Yet that is the equivalent to how Sahil is meauring fiscal records.
— Brian Riedl (@Brian_Riedl) July 24, 2019
The deficit has shrunk under GOP Congress and grown under Dem Congress and, since it is the Congress who makes the budget, that seems the more interesting metric.
Sahil knows this, but is hoping you do not.
He is hoping you are too stupid to notice this omission. https://t.co/W9eQvo5wmG— PoliMath (@politicalmath) July 24, 2019
The opposite is more obviously true at the state and local level. An analysis from Truth in Accounting examined the budgets of every state and discovered that in states with a Democrat Governor and state legislature, there is an average of $22,214 in unfunded debt. By contrast, in states with a Republican Governor and State legislature, the figure is only $1,473. In states where power is split, the average is $14,963, with the trend showing the bluer a state is, the most debt its racked up.
(Don’t) Say My Name!
AOC seems to be under the impression that she’s both a rising celebrity and also that people don’t know her name. After Kevin McCarthy referred to AOC as “AOC” just like everyone else, she interpreted this as him not knowing her name.
*When you’re 7 months into your new job but that one guy still doesn’t know how to say your name* https://t.co/2lqkuRXbIi
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 25, 2019
This came four months after she explained why her name was hyphenated – and that it’s OK to call her AOC.
For the curious, in Latinx culture children take *both* their parents‘ names.
It’s not a “progressive, new thing.” It’s just how some names work. PR hyphenates, others mark differently. Your last name = the families that came together to make you.
AOC is also fine though :)
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019
And do I need to point out that her twitter handle is “AOC”?
Speaking of not knowing people, amusingly, it wasn’t long ago that AOC falsely accused a man of sexism she believed to be a Republican politician. The Republican Party of Kentucky posted a photo of Rep. John Yarmuth next to a cardboard cutout of AOC, trying to link them as sharing a socialist agenda. AOC apparently interpreted this differently, and accused Republicans of allowing their “older male members [to pose] next to cardboard cutouts of young female legislators.”
Yarmuth is a Democrat…. and is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, of which AOC is also a member.
How didn’t she recognize someone who she works with?
Who knows, maybe we all look alike to her.
BONUS: Politifact for the Rescue
Remember this tweet from last month?
I’ll never forget this, because it was the moment I saw with my own eyes that the America I love was becoming a nation that steals refugee children from their parents,& caged them.
More kids died after this. To date, no one has been held accountable.
We need to save these kids. https://t.co/HhdMqc5zML
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 25, 2019
Critics quickly alleged that the viral photo was staged, as evidenced by the fact that AOC was crying outside of a largely empty lot. There wasn’t any visible suffering present for her to be crying about.
In response to claims that AOC was crying in front of an empty parking lot, Politifact cried foul. AOC wasn’t crying in front of an empty parking lot, they began to clarify, she was actually crying in front of an empty road.
Thanks for clearing that one up guys.
Was @AOC crying over a parking lot while protesting family separation? False, she was standing on a road to a migrant facility, which was in her line of gaze, and was just beyond the port of entry. https://t.co/iDpcPCzcwh
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) July 22, 2019
Since when did organizations that are supposed to act as media watchdogs become less reliable than the media itself?