As she often does, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) took to the Twitter machine earlier today to rant, this time to talk about a recent trip to Puerto Rico and what she saw there. In the process, she promptly tripped over her own arguments rather spectacularly.
In her first tweet, the “Squad” leader known as “AOC” talked about how she visited PR last month after her grandmother became ill. The Congresswoman included pictures of her grandmother’s home, which appears to have roof damage among other things. Who’s fault was it for the conditions she was in 3 and 1/2 years after Hurricane Maria hit the island? Former President Trump, Ocasio-Cortez alleged:
Though she blamed Trump for the lion’s share of the problems they’ve faced, AOC also proclaimed there were other issues hampering Puerto Rico relief efforts, like the federally-established PR Financial Oversight and Management board also known in Latin-American circles as “la junta,” and “local policies, etc” who she says “were all on the same page: policies that pushed out local families.”
Except what Ocasio-Cortez didn’t count on were her tweets coming back to bite her in the you-know-where. Numerous people pointed out the fact that she owns a $35,000 Tesla, lives in two fancy apartments, and bought a purebred dog last year (which are usually not cheap). She also makes $174,000 a year, not to mention the undisclosed amounts she likely gets for speaking engagements. So why couldn’t she do more to help out her Abuela with the problems she was having with her house instead of waiting on the government to step in?
Conservative writer Matt Walsh was one of the more prominent voices calling her out, which led to a contentious exchange between the two in which he let her have it:
Indeed. I mean admitted socialist AOC is such a proponent of “spreading the wealth,” but what about when it comes spreading her wealth to her family members in need? Sounds like a major double standard at play here, which is about par for the course considering her infamous “do as I say and not as I do” form of “activism.” Everybody else needs to pay up but don’t you dare expect her to do the same. She’s too important.
Beyond that, what does AOC conveniently leave out of her argument? The fact that corrupt local officials hid some of the initial aid and supplies that were sent to Puerto Rico, which infuriated the Trump administration when they found out about it. Considering the depth of the corruption, it’s no wonder the administration put more stringent restrictions in place on sending future aid to PR until they got their act together.
As usual, AOC went off half-cocked on an argument and then turned around and played the victim and selfless martyr when hoisted with her own petard. While I normally find myself annoyed when she takes to Twitter and does things like this, in this case, I’ll make an exception because this is one of those situations where what she tweeted unintentionally said more about her (and not in a good way) than it did about the people she was trying to blame.