Five Things Democratic Socialist Ocasio-Cortez May Have Wished She Never Said

Speaking recently at Boston University, her alma mater, Democratic socialist Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, 29, raised more than a few eyebrows when she indicated what she would do if she wins her campaign for the House in New York.

“It doesn’t mean you get everything tomorrow,” she said in early October. “As much as I would love that, I would love to get inaugurated January 3 [and then on] January 4 we’re signing health care, we’re signing this.”

Oh, dear.

Someone clearly needed to point out to the Bronx-born politician that members of Congress do not get “inaugurated,” as the president does — they are sworn in.

She would also not have the ability to sign any bills into law — that is still the responsibility of President Donald Trump, as Fox News Insider pointed out.

But this is far from the only embarrassing, awkward, or just plain wrong thing Ocasio-Cortez has said during the course of her campaign.

As voters go to the polls today and cast their ballots in the midterms both in her state of New York and all across the country, here are four other things Ocasio-Cortez may have wished she never said on a variety of topics:

2.) Foreign policy. “[Israel’s] occupation of Palestine is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition.”

In a July 2018 appearance on PBS’s “Firing Line,” Ocasio-Cortez put her rather inadequate understanding of Israel’s statehood and Israeli-Palestinian affairs in general on display for the world to see.

When the interviewer, understandably, sought some clarification, in a rare moment of accurate self-appraisal, Ocasio-Cortez added, “I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue.”

Now there’s an understatement!

3.) Economic systems. “When this country started … we did not operate on a capitalist economy.”

In another gem from the “Firing Line” interview, Ocasio-Cortez predicted that capitalism would eventually cease to exist. The self-proclaimed Democratic socialist somehow also declared that the United States has not always been rooted in capitalism.

In her defense, perhaps she was referencing some fictional version of the United States she read about in a dystopian novel in grade school. One doesn’t really know.

4.) Basic math. “If corporations paid — if we reverse the tax bill, raised our corporate tax rate to 28 percent … if we do those two things and also close some of those loopholes, that’s $2 trillion right there. That’s $2 trillion in 10 years.”

Umm … no. Ocasio-Cortez failed spectacularly to explain how she would fund her socialist agenda during a “The Daily Show” interview in July of 2018, as The Washington Examiner reported.

Even fellow socialist Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) estimates that Medicare for All — which is just one of many programs Ocasio-Cortez would like to implement — would cost about $14 trillion over a decade.

That would leave Ocasio-Cortez about $12 trillion short. But what’s $12 trillion among friends?

5.) American history — and how weather works. “There is a systemic issue here, and that is the modern-day colonial relationship that the United States has with Puerto Rico.”

In remarks on CNN’s “State of the Union” in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Ocasio-Cortez — whose mother is Puerto Rican — demonstrated a profound misunderstanding of what a self-governed, unincorporated U.S. territory is and how that works.

And to cap it off, in that same interview, she indicated that the destruction in Puerto Rico after the hurricane could have been prevented if only we had poured more money into addressing climate change.

Michele Blood is a Flemington, New Jersey-based freelance writer and regular contributor to LifeZette.