Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, elected to Congress in the 2018 midterms from New York’s 14th Congressional District, made some painfully oblivious gaffes on the campaign trail and on Twitter in past months.
She’s now continuing in that manner as she awaits her swearing-in this January.
The fresh-faced lawmaker-elect has filled Twitter and Instagram these past few days with posts that leave her detractors — and even some of her supporters — shaking their heads in disbelief.
Even the liberal-friendly Washington Post couldn’t allow her to skate on her latest whopper — a $21 trillion “mistake” for which The Post’s fact-checkers awarded her the cringeworthy “four Pinnochios.”
In Sunday’s economics-challenged tweet, the 29-year-old somehow concluded that Pentagon accounting errors could finance two thirds of her goal to saddle the United States with socialized medicine.
“$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors,” she wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
“Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon. And that’s before our premiums.”
$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions “could not be traced, documented, or explained.”
$21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T.
That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.
And that’s before our premiums. https://t.co/soT6GSmDSG
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 2, 2018
No, actually.
That’s not how accounting works.
“The $21 trillion is not one big pot of dormant money collecting dust somewhere. It’s the sum of all transactions — both inflows and outflows — for which the Defense Department did not have adequate documentation,” The Post’s fact-checker, Salvador Rizzo, patiently explained. He added a quote from The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein, who noted that the same dollar could be accounted for many times over.
Removing any shred of doubt that The Post was spot-on in calling out Ocasio-Cortez’s flawed reasoning, The Post added this from Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood: “The [Department of Defense] hasn’t received $21 trillion in (nominal) appropriated funding across the entirety of American history.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s $21 trillion citation and statement that 66 percent of Medicare for All could have been already funded by the Pentagon is “badly flawed. The same article she referenced on Twitter would have set her straight,” The Post added, ultimately assigning the tweet its worst possible fact-check rating reserved for “whoppers.”
Unfortunately, the Sunday slip-up did not deter Ocasio-Cortez from resuming her tweetstorm.
The content of many tweets, predictably, are posts chastising her senior Republican colleagues — whom she will join officially in a few weeks’ time.
Later on Sunday, she called out White House press secretary Sarah Sanders for “false statements” and former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) for including his title on Twitter.
Perhaps she was upset that that governor — and yes, he can still use that title — had razzed her in an earlier tweet for incorrectly saying there were “three branches” of Congress.
A Green New Deal will take a level of ambition + innovation on the scale of the moon landing. We’ve been done it before, and can do it again.
Leave the false statements to Sarah Huckabee. She’s much better at it.
Also, you haven’t been a Governor of any state for 10+ years now. https://t.co/R7q5CkMw8Y
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 3, 2018
On Monday, she went after “congressmen” calling for fiscal responsibility for their “expectation that part-time workers magically invent money to work for free.”
Gotta love the rich irony of Congressmen asking “How are you going to pay for it?” suddenly grow awfully quiet when called out on their expectation that part-time workers magically invent money to work for free https://t.co/303cx5DpvA
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 3, 2018
In a second Monday tweet, she praised economists for “roasting GOP bullies.”
?? when Nobel Prize-winning economists get in on roasting GOP bullies ?? https://t.co/fdaRjYryaM
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 3, 2018
In a third and fourth Monday tweet, she declared that Congress is “unjust” and a “disgrace” for offering unpaid internships, insisting that members either cut down on their staff, pay people better, or raise the allowance that members of the House of Representatives receive to run their offices.
This particular rant appears to have been driven by Ocasio-Cortez’s experience at a “dive spot in D.C.,” where she was apparently eating.
Related: Ocasio-Cortez Doubles Down on Her Moon Landing Comparison
While there, she said she met “several bartenders, managers & servers currently working in the Senate + House offices.”
In other words — she encountered hardworking Americans who hold more than one job to make ends meet in a city with a notoriously high cost of living.
It is unjust for Congress to budget a living wage for ourselves, yet rely on unpaid interns & underpaid overworked staff just bc Republicans want to make a statement about “fiscal responsibility.”
If that’s the case, they can cut down on staff to pay them well. Or raise the MRA.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 3, 2018
This week I went to dive spot in DC for some late night food. I chatted up the staff.
SEVERAL bartenders, managers, & servers *currently worked in Senate + House offices.*
This is a disgrace. Congress of ALL places should raise MRAs so we can pay staff an actual DC living wage.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 3, 2018
And in case any of her constituents were still in the dark about her level of respect for the office of the president and his appointees, and her willingness to work in a bipartisan manner, she called the current administration “criminal from the start” yesterday.
She also claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement was “violating international law.”
Thank you, @RepJayapal.
It shouldn’t have to take a member of Congress physically showing up herself to get ICE to stop violating international law *as an exception.*
From jailing children to banning folks based on their religion, this Admin has been criminal from the start. https://t.co/YDhJxsARiX
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 3, 2018
Buckle up, America.
Ocasio-Cortez and her congressional cohorts will assume office on January 3.
Michele Blood is a Flemington, New Jersey-based freelance writer and regular contributor to LifeZette.
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