Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might be a progressive icon, but she says she generally gets along well with her Republican colleagues — except on Monday, when one of them reportedly called the New York Democrat a “fucking bitch.”
Florida Rep. Ted Yoho ran into Ocasio-Cortez as he was leaving the Capitol after voting and she was heading inside to do the same, the Hill reported Tuesday morning. Yoho told Ocasio-Cortez that she was “disgusting” and “out of your freaking mind” for recently proposing that there might be a link between poverty and New York City’s recent surge of crime.
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In response, Ocasio-Cortez told Yoho he was being “rude,” the Hill reported. She then left.
Yoho continued down the stairs. Then he reportedly called her a “fucking bitch.”
Yoho declined to comment to the Hill about the exchange. But in a tweet Tuesday morning, Ocasio-Cortez said she had never spoken to Yoho before the confrontation.
“Believe it or not, I usually get along fine w/ my GOP colleagues. We know how to check our legislative sparring at the committee door,” she said. “But hey, ‘b*tches’ get stuff done.”
To complete the tweet, she added an emoji of a woman shrugging.
Earlier this month, during a remote town hall with the mothers of Eric Garner and Ramarley Graham — two Black men who died at the hands of New York cops — Ocasio-Cortez was asked about gun violence in New York City, according to the Hill. The city, formerly the epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak and now cautiously emerging from a shutdown, is currently facing a wave of shootings.
Ocasio-Cortez suggested that economic disparities and unemployment, combined with policymakers’ foundering efforts to combat it, may be responsible for rising crime.
“Do we think this has to do with the fact that there’s record unemployment in the United States right now? The fact that people are at a level of economic desperation that we have not seen since the Great Recession?” she said.
“Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren’t paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent and so they go out and they need to feed their child and they don’t have money so you maybe have to — they’re put in a position where they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry that hungry.”
After the town hall, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Republicans are all upset that I’m connecting the dots between poverty and crime.”
“This may be hard for them to admit, but poverty and crime are highly linked, both violent and nonviolent alike,” she added.
Cover: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., gestures during a debate ahead of New York’s June 23 primary election, Wednesday, June 17, 2020, in New York. Three of the four candidates attended. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
