Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) ranted during an Instagram Live video last night about a wide range of issues, including unleashing false attacks on President Donald Trump’s cabinet and undermining the confidence and legitimacy of the 2020 elections.
“Um, the president’s cabinet, you have Secretary Elaine Chao, who is the wife of Mitch McConnell, by the way, seems, does that seem a little, uh, conflict of interest? Inappropriate? I don’t know,” she began. “But, regardless, um, she was the Secretary of Transportation, um, she resigned. Betsy DeVos has resigned. Acting Secretary of DHS, Department of Homeland Security, has resigned. And all of them, are resigning rather than fulfilling their duties in acting the 25th Amendment and removing the president of the United States.”
“Uh, I have a message for anyone who is resigning after Wednesday: Too late! Too late. You’ve, you’re not going to resign after Wednesday and act like you weren’t a part of it. Were you secretary on Wednesday? Yes you were, you were a part of it,” she claimed. “Were you secretary every single step leading up to Wednesday? Yes? Then you were a part of it. You don’t get to allow for an attack that kills five people and then afterwards, you say, I wasn’t a part of it. Yes, you were.”
AOC suggests there’s a “conflict of interest” in Sen. McConnell being married to the former secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao. pic.twitter.com/9XDrKXK5Fo
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 13, 2021
AOC later continued ranting at cabinet secretaries, claiming that they were “a part” of putting kids in cages, a practice that started under the Obama administration.
“You were a part of it when you repealed Title IX. You were a part of it when the president committed the first dozen number of crimes that he committed. You were a part of it when you excused the law breaking. You were a part of it. You were a part of it. You were a part of it,” she said. “Those five people’s blood is on your hands. What are you going to do? And they think that resigning is going to clean that blood off their hands. It is always on them. They are forever stained with the deaths of five people, especially when they did not invoke the 25th Amendment to remove this president when they had the power to do so.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that the cabinet secretaries have blood on their hands from last week’s riot is false, and the specific secretaries that she mentioned all condemned the violence and some of them resigned over it.
“Cowards. Cowards. Couldn’t even stand up in the memory of these officers that they pretend to care about, that they pretend to care about,” she continued. “I don’t want to hear or see the Republican Party talk about blue lives ever again. This was never about safety for them. It was always a slogan, because if they actually cared about rule of law they would speak up when people break the law. They would speak up. They would enforce fairness and equity but they don’t give a damn about the law. They don’t give a damn about order. They don’t give a damn about safety.”
AOC said that Republicans only care about preserving “whiteness” as she then cast doubt about the legitimacy of the U.S. elections, saying that it was “generous” to call them “free and fair elections” as she pushed unsubstantiated claims of “voter suppression” in an election that had historic turnout. Also, despite defending law enforcement, she was one of the main proponents of the “defund the police” movement. Ocasio-Cortez also downplayed crime surges last summer, and even said that “the whole point of protesting is to make [people] uncomfortable.” AOC even advised those who attended last summer’s tumultuous events on what to bring and not to bring with them and suggested that people needed to give into leftist demands in order to end the riots.
“They give a damn about white supremacy. They care about preserving the social order and the mythology of whiteness than the grandeur of our democracy,” she claimed without evidence. “That’s what they care about. They lust for power more than care about democracy. That’s what those people did when they voted to overturn the results of our free and fair elections and you can barely call them that with the amount of voter suppression that they have engaged in across the country. It is generous to say the least, to call them that.”
AOC: Republicans “don’t give a damn about the law … they give a damn about about white supremacy; they care about preserving the social order and the mythology of whiteness”; “they lust for power more than they care about democracy" pic.twitter.com/MCk6OmxN7Q
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 13, 2021