Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claimed that Fox News hosts, such as Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson, refer to her as simply “Cortez,” instead of her full last name, “Ocasio-Cortez.” Although there is no evidence to prove they have ever referred to her as “Cortez,” the NY representative slammed Fox and accused those who drop the “Ocasio” of having racial malice.
“Fox News likes to say my name (incorrectly) as ‘Cortez,’ which I can only imagine is bc that sounds more ‘stereotypically’ Hispanic + probably incites more ‘anxiety’ for them,” she claimed in a Wednesday tweet.
“Pro Tip: My last name is not ‘Cortez,’ just as theirs isn’t ‘Ingra’ or ‘Carl’ or ‘Hann,’” she added, referencing Ingraham, Carlson, and Hannity.
Her complaint continued: “My last name is Ocasio-Cortez. Full stop. That’s my name. No, you can’t say ‘Cortez.’ I’ve never used that in my life. ‘Cortez’ is referring to someone else.”
“Even if they‘re trying to be rude + wrong, my dad’s last name was Ocasio anyway,” she added.
“For the curious, in Latinx culture children take *both* their parents’ names,” she explained in another post. “It’s not a ‘progressive, new thing.’ It’s just how some names work. PR hyphenates, others mark differently. Your last name = the families that came together to make you.”
“AOC is also fine though :)” she added.
Ocasio-Cortez appears to be spreading false information about the Fox hosts. Grabien Media founder Tom Elliott looked into the claim and found that over the last month Ingraham and Hannity have not once referred to the freshman congresswoman as “Cortez” on their shows.
“You may be unsurprised to learn that this is untrue. I checked every mention of ‘Cortez’ on the Ingraham Angle in March and didn’t find [The Ingraham Angle] referring to [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] as ‘Cortez’ once. On 3/14, Rabbi Aryeh Spero said ‘Cortez and her quartet,’ but Laura never did,” he responded to the rep. in a Wednesday tweet.
“Just checked [Sean Hannity], whom she also accuses of this ostensible hate crime. Like Laura, Hannity did not refer to [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] as ‘Cortez’ once in the month of March (I checked every show). She’s mentioned 20x in one episode, but every time correctly,” Elliott continued.
“Unless [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] has something to back up this claim, it would seem she owes apologies to Hannity and Ingraham,” Elliott noted. “Randomly accusing people of prejudice is indecent, esp. when it will inevitably be used for more boycott fodder.”
And it appears Carlson doesn’t refer to the New York representative as “Cortez,” either. When the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” host did a five-minute-plus segment on the democratic socialist Tuesday night, for example, he mentioned her name over a dozen times; he referred to her as “Ocasio-Cortez,” “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” “Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez,” and “AOC” (which is Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter handle). He did not once refer to her as “Cortez.”