When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not weeping in congressional hearings — and then tweeting out her emotional performances — she’s alleging racism, as she did this week against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
But she’s now amping up her game in a new direction: Claiming she’s getting death threats — and blaming Pelosi for them.
The two have been locked in a battle, with AOC claiming Pelosi is giving her committee assignments that demand a lot of work, effectively taking the media-starved newcomer out of the spotlight. When Pelosi dismissed the charge, AOC then claimed the Speaker is racist.
Pelso has slapped four mouthy newcomers — Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). That, AOC said, is horrific.
“It’s singling out four individuals, and knowing the media environment that we’re operating in, knowing the amount of death threats that we get, knowing the amount of concentration of attention,” Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN. “I think it’s just worth asking why.”
That claim followed one earlier this week, when AOC attacked Pelosi.
“When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But the persistent singling out . . . it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful . . . the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”
In a Wednesday interview on WNYC’s “New Yorker Hour,” Ocasio-Cortez said “I was assigned to some of the busiest committees and four subcommittees.”
“So my hands are full. And sometimes I wonder if they’re trying to keep me busy,” she said of Democratic leaders.
Pelosi, who has been in politics some 40 years and is serving as Speaker for the second time, is not a big fan of the newcomer. She has repeatedly dismissed AOC and her power on social media, along with the Democratic socialist’s “Green New Deal.”
“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi told the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd published Saturday. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got,” she said of the new progressive foursome
