AOC Snipes at Pelosi: Leadership ‘Trying to Keep Me Busy’ and Out of the Way

The contentious battle between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) continues to heat up, with the freshman lawmaker publicly wondering if leadership assigned her to busy committees to keep her out of the way, she said during an appearance on New York Radio hour Tuesday.

Ocasio-Cortez said she does not have any sort of “distinguished” relationship with the House Speaker, noting she has not spoken to the leader one-on-one since she asked Ocasio-Cortez to join the Select Committee on Climate Change.

“I said no,” the New York lawmaker revealed.

She said she declined because the committee would not accommodate her “very specific requests,” including subpoena power and a definitive two-year deadline to draft climate change legislation.

The lawmaker also wondered – aloud – if House leadership assigned her to the “busiest” committees in order to keep her out of the way.

“I was assigned to two of some of the busiest committees and four subcommittees. So my hands are full. And sometimes I wonder if they’re trying to keep me busy,” she mused.

This is just the latest of the public back and forth between the veteran and freshman lawmaker. Tensions escalated after Pelosi ultimately succumbed to Republicans, admitting the existence of a crisis on the southern border and ultimately accepting the bipartisan emergency funding package that omitted Ocasio-Cortez’s (and her “squad’s”) version entangled with immigration enforcement restrictions.

Pelosi reportedly tore into her colleagues during a closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday, primarily for airing their dirty laundry on social media and publicly bashing more moderate members of the caucus.

“So, again, you got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it,” Pelosi reportedly told her Democrat colleagues. “But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just ok.”

While a spokesman for the speaker said that she was not referring to a specific individual, all signs point to Ocasio-Cortez, who has tweeted about Pelosi many times over the past week:

Ocasio-Cortez did react to Pelosi’s remarks following the meeting, but a reporter from the Daily Mail asked if she would stop tweeting, and she simply said “no.”

Most recently, Ocasio-Cortez accused Pelosi of racism, bringing up what she sees as Pelosi’s “explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”

Pelosi’s opening bid on the current spending and debt ceiling negotiations – which as Breitbart News reported, push spending levels “as high as $2 trillion above current law” and “set government spending levels at where House Democrats’ appropriations packages are” – reveal her struggle to balance the moderates and extreme left-wing faction within her party. The White House believes – if it can unite Republicans, specifically on a continuing resolution – they will be able to call her bluff yet again, using her fractured caucus to their advantage.