Congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Ortez (D-N.Y.) in an April 3 interview with Emma Vigeland of TYT Politics.
By Jonathan Larsen
Newsmax host John Cardillo isn’t the only Republican attacking Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. On Sunday, Republican pundit Steve Deace tweeted the following:
A “socialist” from an elite neighborhood pimping a product line, while running for office on “power to the proletariat,” is every Orwell novel ever. Next thing you know, she’ll have three houses like Bernie. https://t.co/joo1QJr0Mf
— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) July 1, 2018
Cardillo’s ill-fated Tweet, which prompted a response from Ocasio-Cortez, came later that day:
This is the Yorktown Heights (very nice area) home @Ocasio2018 grew up in before going off to Ivy League Brown University.
A far cry from the Bronx hood upbringing she’s selling. pic.twitter.com/xyOtZzVJII
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) July 1, 2018
(Also on Sunday, the New York Post published a story about the one former co-worker of Ocasio-Cortez who didn’t like how a day’s tips got split one day.)
It’s worth noting the language Deace and Cardillo use: “pimping” and “hood.” And it’s worth noting that Cardillo was wrong about her school (she went to Boston University, not Brown). But Cardillo’s non-apology elided the fact that he was relying on Brown’s status to discredit her, not, as he claimed, for “bumping” her credentials:
The racist left is losing their collective minds because I mistakenly tweeted that @Ocasio2018 went to Ivy League Brown University rather than non Ivy League Boston University.
Shame on me for bumping her academic credentials.
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) July 2, 2018
The consistent theme is that Ocasio-Cortez is not as working class as she seems. Republicans typically exalt people who are financially successful, so it’s not clear why this would be a problem for them. But let’s consider the facts about Ocasio-Cortez.
First, she was born in and lives in the Bronx. So, yeah, she’s from the Bronx, unless anyone who’s ever moved anywhere is no longer from anywhere.
Second, TYT reporter Alex Kotch dug up Ocasio-Cortez’s financial statements and posted them in a tweet thread Sunday night:
For all the staggeringly dumb jerks attempting to do a hit job on @Ocasio2018 today: Maybe try doing actual journalism and take 20 seconds to find her financial disclosure.
She made $26,581 last year working at a coffee shop. https://t.co/ikS3FREEVe pic.twitter.com/CmstdUlaXO
— Alex Kotch 🔥 (@alexkotch) July 2, 2018
Third, Ocasio-Cortez had to fight off foreclosure of that palatial Yorktown Heights mansion after her Dad died.
But fourth, and most importantly, even if she had been born and raised in Yorktown Heights, and then attended Brown University, and never had to fight foreclosure on her childhood home, all of that would make her story even more emblematic of where we are today. Ocasio-Cortez would be just one of millions of millennials who came from an upwardly mobile middle class and then couldn’t sustain that level of economic success.
Cardillo, Deace, and the others attacking Ocasio-Cortez keep talking about how glad they are that an open socialist is running for office so they can debate socialism honestly. But so far they haven’t.