Thursday, FNC host Tucker Carlson opened his program with a scathing attack on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who Carlson claimed was not the “radical” progressive that she has branded herself as.
According to Carlson, an incident at one of her town halls with anti-war protesters shed light on Ocasio-Cortez’s real worldview.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Like all sorority girl narcissists, there is nothing the congresswoman from New York’s 14th congressional district enjoys more than giving herself new nicknames. In high school, in leafy Westchester County, she was known as “Sandy Cortez.” We still call her that because of all her various pseudonyms, that one fits the best.
And then when she became a member of Congress, she adopted the august and faintly exotic title, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which sounds like the name of one of Che’s girlfriends in Revolutionary Bolivia. You can just picture her in the back of the motorcycle, in a beret. And then once she ascended, still higher and became a Kardashian, this very same person began going by simply “AOC, Queen of TikTok.”
But along the way, and most people do not know this, she had still another name. During the 2018 Democratic primary, in which she beat party stalwart Joe Crowley by attacking him for being white, Sandy Cortez went by the name “Alex.” Just Alex, your friendly neighborhood, gender-non-specific bartender, Alex.
On Alex’s campaign website at the time, there was a section explaining what Alex believed. One of Alex’s views read this way, “Alex believes we must end the forever war by bringing our troops home and ending the airstrikes and bombings that perpetuate the cycle of terrorism and occupation throughout the world.”
Now few people noticed this because for a self-described progressive, that didn’t seem like a very surprising position. And on the day that Sandy Cortez, “Alex,” beat Joe Crowley in the primary, that statement was still on her website, but then it disappeared. No one noticed except a journalist called Sameera Khan. “Hey, what happened to the anti-war part?”
Now Alex, who by this point had morphed into Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, blamed the deletion of this position on her supporters, who she claimed were running the website and had done it accidentally. Who knows what happened to it?
But Sameera Khan sensed there might be more to the story. “How long,” she asked at the time, “Will we be moaning on and on about single-payer while there’s bipartisan support for nuclear Armageddon?”
Well, that turned out to be a pretty good question, Sameera Khan. In fact, it’s no longer a rhetorical question. There is indeed now bipartisan support for nuclear Armageddon. We’re not making that up. Joe Biden said it out loud at a fundraiser the day. Oh by the way, nuclear Armageddon on the way. OK.
And then Republicans in Congress said nothing, which is to say they backed him up and Sandy Cortez, she stayed totally silent and that really is the point. Now, if you’re watching this show, it’s likely you don’t really care what’s going on in the so-called progressive movement. It’s not one of your interests and why would you care?
They’re mostly trustafarian clowns. They’re jokes, kids with weird hair, pointless liberal arts degrees, stupid fantasy-based politics. That’s who they are, but it’s also true that over time, people like this can be useful.
Sometimes you want principled people taking principled positions. It keeps the system in balance. You need that. Not everyone can be a mercenary. Otherwise, you wind up with what we have now, which is true insanity: An iron clad consensus in Washington that we somehow have a moral obligation to destroy ourselves and our children’s future in an utterly pointless war against Russia. What?
Everyone seems to think that, and we mean everyone on both sides, from liberals like Nancy Pelosi to conservatives like Joni Ernst and everyone in between them, and that’s a huge problem because it’s insane. Someone needs to say it’s insane out loud and break the spell, the hypnotism.
That would be the job of a so-called radical like Sandy Cortez. That’s why she exists. Now, you may despise her. Obviously, we do. We say so often, but at certain key moments, people like that have a role. They stand up and they tell the essential truth. No, we should not go to war with Russia. What are you kidding? This is lunacy. Pull back.
And if Sandy Cortez did that, it might actually help. It might actually save the country, but that’s not what Sandy Cortez is doing right now, because it turns out she is not at all what she claims to be.
Sandy Cortez may hate White people, seems like she does, but that doesn’t mean she is progressive, much less liberal in any meaningful sense. No, she is the opposite. It turns out, she is just another stooge like Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, a willing tool of soulless corporate power who will always side with Google, JPMorgan and Raytheon against the working people she claims to represent.
On no subject is this more glaringly obvious than the Ukraine war. That war provides absolutely no benefit of any kind to her constituents or, by the way, to any other normal American. For the people of Queens and the Bronx, that war is all downside, no upside whatsoever.
So last night, at a sparsely attended town hall in the Bronx, two of Sandy Cortez’s constituents said that out loud. Watch this.
PROTESTER ONE: Congresswoman, none of this matters unless there’s a nuclear war which you voted to send arms and weapons to Ukraine. Tulsi Gabbard, she has left the Democratic Party because they’re war hawks.
Okay, you originally voted — you ran as an outsider, yet you’ve been voting to start this was in Ukraine. You’re voting to start a third nuclear war with Russia and China. Why are you playing with the lives of American citizens? You’re playing with our lives.
PROTESTER TWO: There will be no neighbors if there’s a nuclear bomb. You voted to mobilize and send money to Ukrainian Nazis. You’re a coward. You’re a progressive socialist. Where are you against the war mobilization?
PROTESTER ONE: He’s telling the right truth. You have done nothing. Tulsi Gabbard has shown guts where you’ve shown cowardice.
I believed in you and you became the very thing you sought to fight against. That’s what you’ve become. You are the establishment and you are the reason why everybody will end up in a nuclear war unless you choose to stand up right now and denounce the Democratic Party.
We could end up in a nuclear war at any minute and you continue to fund it. That’s what’s going on.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): I’ll answer your question. I’ll get to the issue last. I will get to the issue.
PROTESTER TWO: Why not right now?
OCASIO-CORTEZ: Because you are being rude to everybody around you.
PROTESTER TWO: You’re the liar here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: OK, so those are actual progressives. Now, there’s no doubt that on virtually any other issue, we wouldn’t agree with them. I don’t know what their beliefs are, probably don’t intersect with ours. But on this specific issue, which does matter, they’re absolutely right.
Sandy Cortez is not a radical. She’s not a progressive. She’s a neocon, just like everybody else. She is a tool of the people with power, obviously. They can see that clearly because it’s true.
Her response? You are being rude. You’re being rude now, says the very same Sandy Cortez, who instructed activists to terrorize their political opponents. “The whole point of protesting is to make people uncomfortable.” Oh, is that right?
So, they were kind of following your instructions, weren’t they? The protesters you just saw used Sandy Cortez’s preferred tactics against her. They immediately seized the moral high ground, and they started yelling. And they got no response from Sandy Cortez. Why is that? Because she has nothing to say. They’re on to her. They know who she really is, and she knows that. They were right.
Shortly after she took office, Sandy Cortez funded the largest expansion of our nation’s military ever. In 2019, she approved an unprecedented $738 billion military budget. Now, publicly, Sandy Cortez never justified this vote. Instead, she kept demonizing the military she was funding, right? Of course. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OCASIO-CORTEZ: I don’t believe our whole nation’s priority is to slaughter people in other parts of the world. I think it is a priority of a powerful and concentrated class in the United States that happens to have a grip of control over our government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: That was the TikTok-approved version. That was for all the college kids on social media. But in real life, she didn’t mean a word of it. The only part she meant was America is terrible. She does believe that, she does hate the country.
But pulling back from a war that will hurt the country, why would she do that? She doesn’t like the country. Anything that’s not in our interest, she is completely for and that’s why this year, Sandy Cortez, along with every member of The Squad, the progressives, voted to approve another massive $40 billion military spending bill. Cori Bush even voted for it even after she admitted it would directly contribute to, “The increased risks of direct war and the potential for direct military confrontation between Russia and the US.”
So, to even Cori Bush, probably the lowest IQ member of the United States Congress, it was pretty obvious where this was going. It was going to war with Russia, but she voted for it anyway. They all did.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the Democratic Party tried to sell this, which is, again, a step toward war, which does not help us in any way, only hurts us as a humanitarian effort. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Today, we are voting to provide nearly $40 billion to address the immediate and near-term security, economic, and humanitarian needs of the Ukrainian people.
REP. ROSA DELAURO (D-CT): We are morally obligated to ensure the brave Ukrainian fighters and the Ukrainian people have the security and economic aid that they need.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): What we’re doing here is very important supplying weaponry and security assistance, government, and economic assistance, humanitarian assistance.
REP. STENY HOYER (D-MD): The supplemental appropriation bill is a down payment on the security and success of democracy.
REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE (D-TX): Glory to Ukraine. We want the victory for Ukraine and we want defeat for Vladimir Putin. Regime change would be great, but we realize that that will not happen, but defeat must happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh. So, it’s humanitarian assistance. Really? Did you look at the bill? No, it was a military funding bill. The real point of it was buying arms, more than half of it, $24 billion went to military equipment, weapons. $19 billion went directly to the war effort in Ukraine.
So, okay, if you’re an out-of-the-closet neocon, this makes sense, but if you’re Sandy Cortez, who’s all over TikTok talking about the working people, fighting the man, what does this tell you about her?
She doesn’t care about the people she claims to represent. She has contempt for them. She talks about their misery, only to leverage it for her own benefit. She hoards power in their name. They are merely the tools of her personal advancement. They’re not her real constituency. How could they be? They don’t benefit from this.
Her real constituency is NBC News, the editors at “Teen Vogue” and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the celebrity-endorsed dictator of the most corrupt nation in Europe. Zelenskyy is now shaking down our cowardly Congress for more cash at the very moment our own economy and our own borders are collapsing. Watch.
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): At this time, we have two key financial needs of the country. That’s $38 billion to make up for the deficit of our budget for next year and another $17 billion that were verified by the World Bank needed to rebuild the critical infrastructure.
We need also targeted credits in the amount of $2 billion to rebuild the electric energy infrastructure after the destruction and to expand our export to Europe. We need credit limits to purchase gas and coal for the future heating season. The scope of this year’s support should be not less than $5 billion.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: What? Some uppity foreigner in a t-shirt demanding money for his critical economic needs. We have critical economic needs too, buddy. Who are you, troll? Go away. What? Since when does that guy have a claim on our Treasury?
So, this is the job of people like Sandy Cortez, to remind us, again to break the spell of hypnosis the US Congress is under. We don’t owe this guy anything. Not one thing. Good luck, pal. That’s it.
And as our economy degrades and our border is gone, that guy is lecturing us with some Christmas list, like, “I want this, that, and I want a bicycle, too. You better send it quick.” Really? Up yours, buddy.
And at the same time, dragging us, the entire West toward nuclear war, telling us we have to nuke Russia. And what does Sandy Cortez do? She affirms it. She’s not a progressive. She’s a stealthy, neocon operative.
The entire leadership of the so-called progressive movement is that. They’re totally and utterly corrupt. Is anyone on the left pointing this out? Has Cenk Uygur said a word about it? The so-called radicals at Chapo Trap House? “The Atlantic” Magazine, NPR, MSNBC? All of these left-wing media organizations always telling you how deeply they care about oppressed peoples, all them calling for radical race war every day.
But when actual civilization ending war looms on the horizon, they’re cheering for it, right alongside The Pentagon.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LLOYD AUSTIN, US SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We’re going to stay with our efforts to support Ukraine for as long as it takes.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We will not waver from our commitment to support Ukraine as long as it takes.
JAKE SULLIVAN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: We will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes.
SCOTT PELLEY, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: You’re already north of $15 billion in terms of those commitments. How far do you go?
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As long as it takes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: As long as it takes to do what? Has anyone even asked that question? Has Sandy Cortez asked that question and your progressive pals ask that question? As long as it takes to do what? How long is that? What’s the goal and at what cost? What’s the risk? Should we weigh those? No, as long as it takes. Why? Because they’re getting more powerful even as our country is getting less powerful by the day. So where are the real liberals? Where are the real progressives?
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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