Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back at Nancy Pelosi over the weekend after the House Speaker criticized her and other far-left freshmen congresswomen for voting against a $4.6 billion border bill that President Trump signed into law on Monday.
Congress had approved the bill with help from several moderate Democrats – and in a NYT interview, Pelosi slammed the progressive wing of her party for not also supporting the humanitarian-assistance measure.
“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”
That public “whatever” is called public sentiment.
And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country. https://t.co/u6JtgwwRsk
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 7, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez argued that Democrats cannot trust the Trump administration not to divert money for humanitarian aid toward immigration enforcement — a comment that comes after the President acknowledged that ICE raids would begin after the Fourth of July.
“I don’t believe it was a good idea for Dems to blindly trust the Trump admin when so many kids have died in their custody. It’s a huge mistake,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Saturday, echoing comments she made to CNN following the June vote on border funding.
AOC also defended the use of social media by herself and her fellow newcomers to Congress, over the more traditional – and often more expensive and time-consuming — methods favored by longer-serving lawmakers.
“I find it strange when members act as though social media isn’t important,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “They set millions of [dollars] on [fire] to run TV ads so people can see their message.
“I haven’t dialed for dollars *once* this year,” she added, “& have more time to do my actual job. Yet we’d rather campaign like it’s 2008.”