On his talk radio program Friday, “The Big Voice on the Right” discussed the “wonderful teachable moment” about what is currently taking place within the Democratic Party provided by freshman Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s self-declared “victory” over billionaire Jeff Bezos and Amazon — a “victory” that came at the expense of 25,000 jobs in her district and over $20 billion in tax revenues to her state.
Calling the whole debacle “absolutely fascinating,” Rush Limbaugh posited that it provides us a stark view of the “sea change” taking place within the Democratic Party. Amazon’s decision to pull out of New York “because of actions taken by these new young socialist Democrat congressional people,” he said, “is a wonderful teachable moment about what is happening to the Democrat Party and how the traditional way of looking at states working with companies and corporations to create jobs and create a tax base is out the window.”
Citing emails to him declaring Ocasio-Cortez “dead” in 2020 because she’s responsible for killing the Amazon deal, Limbaugh pushed back on the premise.
“How many of you think with her Amazon victory, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — her victory over Amazon and kicking ’em out of New York and making sure that deal doesn’t happen — how many of you believe that she just guaranteed that she’s going to lose in 2020?” he asked.
“So much can happen between now and then,” he said as a qualifier, “but, on the basis of this alone, no way she has hurt herself. Not with the people who elected her.”
Rush then unpacked AOC’s economically nonsensical comments about New York State supposedly now being able to spend that $3 billion in tax breaks it would have given to Amazon on something else.
“She thinks that she just found $3 billion to spend because the Amazon deal has been canceled,” Limbaugh said. “She doesn’t know that the $3 billion is contingent on Amazon showing up and building their headquarters.”
“Here’s what everybody that was looking at this got wrong, because Cuomo is a lousy salesman. … So the Amazon deal is announced, and Cuomo somehow lets it out that Amazon is getting tax breaks worth $3 billion — and that’s all anybody hears,” Limbaugh explained. “Cuomo did not communicate properly that Amazon is going to be paying $27 billion in taxes over the course of 10 years. The tax break was not the elimination of taxes. It was just gonna be given a break of $3 billion.”
He continued: “By the time he finished making his big announcement, what the people of New York heard was that Amazon is given a $3 billion tax break to move to New York and to open a headquarters. And the way they interpreted that is, essentially, ‘Amazon is being paid $3 billion to come here? Screw that!’ They failed to properly explain that the $3 billion was spread over 10 years and was just a portion of the $27 billion that Amazon was gonna be spending. So none of it exists now.”
Ocasio-Cortez, Limbaugh emphasized, clearly doesn’t understand any of this.
“All she thinks is that the state had $3 billion they were gonna give Amazon for moving in — and now that Amazon isn’t coming, she thinks that she’s got $3 billion to spend!” he exclaimed. “If you doubt me, let’s go to audio sound bite number 20. Here she is in all of her radiant brilliance, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on the CBS News website. An unidentified reporter asks her what she thinks about Amazon’s decision to cancel the headquarters. The reporter says, ‘What’s your reaction to’ Amazon not following through on this?”
Cortez: I think it’s incredible! I mean, it shows that everyday Americans still have the power to organize and fight for their communities, and they can have more say in the country than the richest man in the world. If we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves if we wanted to. We could hire out more teachers. We can fix our subways. We could put a lot of people to work with that money if we wanted to.
“Now, this is a new kind of stupidity,” said Limbaugh. “It is a new kind of economic ignorance, but, I’m telling you, she is no dumber than the people that elected her. They’re all sitting there hearing her and saying, ‘Yeah, man! You tell ’em! You tell ’em. We just told Amazon to go to hell. We just … We’re not gonna sit here and we’re not gonna be forced to give away things to the richest evil corporation in America.’
“And the traditional Democrats like the guy that she defeated and Pelosi and these others, Cuomo, they’re sitting there, and they have been literally shell-shocked,” he continued. “They have no idea. They don’t even know how radically left — really, radically stupid — these young Millennial Democrats are. I find it comically hilarious.”
Related: Limbaugh: Media Trying To Convince Us We Haven’t Heard What We’ve Heard For Last Two Years
Transcript via RushLimbaugh.com