Last week, the New York Post published a scathing rebuke of embattled Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar for her comments dismissively describing the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead simply as “somebody did something.” Now, Omar’s fellow freshman Democratic congresswoman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has come out in support of an attempt to keep the Post out of New Yorkers’ hands.
During an event hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on March 23, Rep. Omar said, “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.” (CAIR was actually founded in 1994 in response to what organization leaders believed was unfair characterization of Muslims in Hollywood.)
“How pathetic: A member of Congress can’t acknowledge what happened on one of the most horrific days in US history,” the New York Post editorial board wrote in the featured editorial published last Thursday. “Some people did something? Wow. What a way to describe the heinous surprise attack on America that claimed 3,000 lives.”
In response, Ocasio-Cortez is actively promoting a boycott targeting the paper. On Saturday, the radical representative issued a tweet endorsing an initiative started by a group of Yemeni-American bodega owners.
“Two years ago, Bodega owners across NYC (& cheered by neighbors) shut their shops citywide to protest Trump’s #MuslimBan,” she wrote. “Today, that same community is banding together to reject sales of the NY Post at bodegas citywide. This is what real unity (& NYC solidarity) looks like.”
In an interview Sunday with Yahoo News’ “Skullduggery” podcast, Ocasio-Cortez explained why she’s promoting the New York Post boycott.
“There’s aggressive politics. There’s people that won’t be fair to you and things like that, and I understand that that’s part of the field that comes with it. But, you know, I think that this is unacceptable,” she said in comments reported by Yahoo. The paper’s attack on Omar, she said, was “beyond the pale.”
But while she is actively promoting it, Ocasio-Cortez made a point of stressing that the boycott effort wasn’t her idea — something she said is a “substantive difference.”
“And also I think it is important to, to assert that I didn’t call for a boycott of the New York Post,” she told the podcast. “I’m amplifying organizing that’s happening on the ground, and I, I do think that there’s a substantive difference between the two.”
Asked if she’s trying to influence the paper or just punish it financially, she said her “focus” in promoting the boycott is “is actually less in endorsing it” and “less on the Post,” and more on demonstrating “solidarity” with immigrant groups.
“Like that to me is what was exciting and inspiring about this action,” she said. “Because these are the same folks who shut down almost every bodega in New York City in protest of the Muslim ban. And what that does is that it elevates the consciousness of all New Yorkers.”
Asked if she is “implicitly” endorsing the boycott by tweeting about the effort, the congresswoman eliminated any potential equivocation. “I endorse it,” she replied. “I do endorse it.”
The representative also acknowledged that the paper has often been critical of her, something she called “annoying” and “agitating,” but, she insisted, that is not why she’s supporting the boycott.
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H/T Ed Morrissey