Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is known for making bold statements, and on Sunday she made another one: President Donald Trump is a racist.
The 29-year-old Democrat and freshman congresswoman from New York revealed her views on Trump in an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes.
“The president certainly didn’t invent racism,” Ocasio-Cortez told Anderson Cooper. “But he’s certainly given a voice to it and expanded it and created a platform for those things.”
Cooper then asked Ocasio-Cortez if she views Trump as racist, and the young progressive lawmaker simply answered: “no question.”
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When pressed what makes her say that, Ocasio-Cortez elaborated.
“When you look at the words that he uses, which are historic dog whistles of white supremacy. When you look at how he reacted to the Charlottesville incident, where neo-Nazis murdered a woman, versus how he manufactures crises like immigrants seeking legal refuge on our borders, it’s, it’s night and day,” she said, adding that Trump was a “symptom” of a problem.
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The White House blasted Ocasio-Cortez in a statement.
“Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s sheer ignorance on the matter can’t cover the fact that President Trump supported and passed historic criminal justice reform … and … has repeatedly condemned racism and bigotry in all forms,” the White House deputy press secretary said.
In November, Ocasio-Cortez made history as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She was sworn in on Thursday alongside the majority-holding House Democrats.
Among the other remarks Ocasio-Cortez made Sunday was a criticism of Republican lawmakers, whom she said were demonstrating a form of “hostage-taking” by demanding greater border security.
“If the GOP wants a wall so badly, they can try to propose and pass a bill like anybody else,” she tweeted. “Instead, they are seizing gov operations + innocent people’s pay until they get what they want.”
Ocasio-Cortez has been criticized by many conservatives for her progressive views that have been called “socialist” and for many other reasons including what some believe to be her lack of knowledge of legislation and government functions, as well as her clothes.
Over the weekend, a video surfaced of Ocasio-Cortez dancing barefoot in a t-shirt for a student-made video when she was a 21-year-old undergraduate at Boston University. Some conservatives were outraged by what they called “immature” behavior,” and the young congresswoman quickly responded by sharing another video of her dancing, this time in the present day in work clothes in what seemed to be her new office on Capitol Hill.
On Monday, The Chicago Tribune reported that a Twitter account has been dedicated to Ocasio-Cortez dancing. The account is called @aoc_dances, and features multiple videos of the youngster busting out moves to dozens of songs.
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