Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of repeatedly singling out ‘newly elected women of color’, branding the congressional veteran as being ‘outright disrespectful’.
The firebrand Democrat made the shocking declaration during an interview with the Washington Post on Wednesday night following a private meeting in which Pelosi warned party members to stop publicly criticizing one another on social media.
‘When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,’ Ocasio-Cortez began.
‘But the persistent singling out … it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful … the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color,’ she continued.
AOC’s remarks are sure to intensify the already strained relations she shares with Pelosi along with her liberal freshmen entourage of Ihan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, known collectively as ‘the squad’.
Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of repeatedly singling out ‘newly elected women of color’, branding the congressional veteran as being ‘outright disrespectful’
The controversial viewpoint was shared just hours after AOC accused Congress of using woman and minority groups as ‘bargaining chips’, auctioning and selling them off for their own political gain in a decades-old tradition.
Speaking with The New York Radio Hour, AOC said she believes a significant amount of insincere pandering towards vulnerable groups occurs among lawmakers during legislative discussions.
‘When it comes to women of color in Congress, particularly the freshman, it’s that we both have encountered and represent communities that have been auctioned off and negotiated off for the last 20 years – and we’re over it.
‘We see in these negotiations all the time— it’s like fighting for black communities or policies that help women,’ she said. ‘They’re bargaining chips. And they’re the first chips that are reached for in any legislative negotiations.’
During the same conversation, AOC also offered her opinion on the current position of the Democratic Party and urged her peers to stop viewing the term socialism as a dirty word.
She also appeared to take a swipe at Pelosi, claiming that power in the nation’s capital has become too concentrated.
‘We don’t know how to talk about our own issues in ways that I think are convincing … we’re too often on the defense. We’re too often afraid of our own values and sticking up for them. And I feel like we run away from our convictions too much,’ she said.
‘The rules of Congress have changed over the years to put, I think, an insane amount of power in a handful of people — within even just the House of Representatives itself. The Speaker, [party] leadership, committee chairs … over the years the rules have changed to kind of consolidate power to a very large degree.’
The remarks came just hours after AOC accused Congress of using woman and minority groups as ‘bargaining chips’ for decades, auctioning and selling them off for their own political gain
The outspoken Democrat and her three closest peers have been embroiled in a public rift with Pelosi ever since Congress passed a border funding bill that the four young congresswomen opposed.
The Speaker has since repeatedly dismissed the progressive quartet’s far-left environmental and health care proposals, provoking frustration among ‘the squad’.
But the feud turned nasty on Wednesday when Pelosi took aim at the four once more in a closed-door caucus meeting.
‘You got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it. But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just ok,’ Pelosi said during the meeting, according to a source in the room.
Ocasio-Cortez was in the room to hear that message as she was spotted leaving the meeting after it was over.
But outside, AOC insisted she would defy Pelosi’s call to stop the tweets and will not change her social media habits.
‘No,’ Ocasio-Cortez said with a big grin to DailyMail.com Wednesday afternoon, when asked if she’d be changing how vocal she is online after Pelosi’s lecture.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is defying Nancy Pelosi’s call to stop the tweets and will not be changing her social media habits
Nancy Pelosi delivered a harsh lecture to her Democratic lawmakers, warning them to stop tweeting about their colleagues
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez teared up during a hearing Wednesday when she listened to Yazmin Jurez, an migrant from Guatemala, talk about how her 19-month old daughter, Mariee, died after becoming sick at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility
The speaker pushed to cool tensions between her more moderate and liberal wings of the party in the wake of a public boiling over that was partially due to comments she made to The New York Times about Ocasio-Cortez and her ‘squad’ of liberal lawmakers.
Pelosi warned members of her party during an early morning meeting in the Capitol that they were endangering the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives with the public bickering.
Her speech was designed to unify the party and got applauded by lawmakers, according to a source a room.
And her comments on Twitter were not meant about any specific lawmaker but a general warning about the use of social media, a Pelosi spokesperson told DailyMail.com.
The unification call came after Pelosi criticized members of ‘the squad’ as they call themselves – Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley – for voting against the $4.6 billion border bill, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley where $3 billion of that would provide funding for humanitarian aid at the U.S.-Mexican border.
The version of the bill that ended up passing the House last month was the Republican-version, after the Democrat version was rejected in the Senate.
Pelosi supported the GOP legislation and slammed the lawmakers who didn’t.
‘All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,’ Pelosi told The New York Times. ‘But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.’
Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to criticize the speaker.
Defiance: AOC, seen in New York earlier this year, is not going to back down in her feud with Nancy Pelosi
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized Speaker Pelosi on twitter earlier this week
‘That public ‘whatever’ is called public sentiment,’ Ocasio-Cortez tweeted hours after Pelosi’s comments were published. ‘And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country.’
‘Having respect for ourselves doesn’t mean we lack respect for her. It means we won’t let everyday people be dismissed,’ she noted.
Ocasio-Cortez had also taken to Twitter to encourage Democrats not to vote for the Republican border bill, which passed 230-195 before lawmakers left on their Fourth of July recess.
The speaker said she didn’t regret her comment to The Times.
‘Regrets is not what I do,’ she told reporters after her meeting with lawmakers.
The speaker also indicated she wasn’t happy with tweets from House staffers, who took to social media to air their complaints about members of Congress.
Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, attacked Pelosi in a series of tweets over the weekend, criticizing her comments on the ‘squad,’ and also tore in to Blue Dog Democrats – as the more moderate members of the party are known – calling them the ‘New Southern Democrats.’
‘They certainly seem hell bent to do black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s,’ he wrote on Twitter before deleting his post.
‘By the way, our caucus is very upset about some of the comments that have come from the staff,’ Pelosi told reporters after the meeting with her caucus.
And Pelosi told lawmakers Wednesday morning it was better to do something than nothing for the migrant children being held at the border.
‘Mitch McConnell would have been very happy if we passed nothing, and nothing was done. He doesn’t care about the children,’ she said of the Senate GOP leader.
‘But to have nothing go to the children. I just couldn’t do that. I’m here to help the children when it’s easy and when it’s hard. Some of you are here to make a beautiful pâté but we’re making sausage most of the time,’ she added.
She warned them to stay unified against the GOP.
Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, attacked Pelosi in a series of tweets over the weekend
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she has not spoken to Speaker Nancy Pelosi in months
The feud between the freshman lawmaker and Speaker Pelosi has heated up
‘We are up against this – a Republican Party, in the administration and in the Congress, that does not believe in governance – in honoring it’s responsibility to the people, does not believe in science, data, truth, evidence, fact to act upon,’ she said.
‘So, don’t play into their hands. Every day some of our Members have to fight the fight for their re-election. It’s easy for me in my district, right? I never have to worry about whether a Democrat will represent that district, whether it’s me or somebody else. But, in their districts, it makes a difference for what we can do for the American people if we have the Majority,’ she lectured.
‘So, I hope there will be some level of respect and sensitivity for our – each individual experience that we bring to this Caucus. When we won the Majority in ’06, we were able to do great things for the country and, including a path to electing a Democratic President. This time we have that same opportunity except we didn’t win the Senate, and that’s a challenge.’
Pelosi told the lawmakers to save their ire for her.
‘You make me the target, but don’t make our Blue Dogs and our new Dems the target in all of this because we have important fish to fry,’ she added.
But she reminded them ‘we’re a family.’
‘While we’re on the subject of family, let me just say, in every family you have your moments,’ she said, adding ‘sometimes all of us on this side of the room are in agreement vis a vis them to the back of the room or to the front of the room. But we’re all a resource to each other and we must never undermine the strength of anyone in our caucus.’
Representatives Ayanna Pressley (above), Ilhan Omar (left) and Rashida Tlaib – along with the not pictured Ocasio Cortez – make up the members of ‘the squad,’ a group of liberal lawmaker Speaker Pelosi has found herself in a feud with
Her lecture came after Ocasio-Cortez revealed she has not spoken to Pelosi in months and suggested she was given a series of major committee assignments in an attempt to keep her busy.
‘I think sometimes people think that we have a relationship,’ she told The New Yorker Radio Hour.
When asked whether they did, the Democratic congresswoman said: ‘Not particularly – not one that I think is distinguished from anyone else.’
Ocasio-Cortez admitted she hasn’t spoken to the speaker one-on-one in months.
‘The last time I kind of spoke to her one on one was when she asked me to join the Select Committee on Climate Change,’ she said.
Pelosi announced the members of that committee in February – six months ago.
The latest revelations from the New York lawmaker come as the power struggle between the young liberals elected in last year’s wave election and the older generation of Democratic leadership spill over into the public.
Pelosi sparked the latest battle with ‘the squad’ – a group of four lawmakers who have become the face of liberal, diverse Democrats who joined Congress after the 2018 election.
The most prominent of those is Ocasio-Cortez, who has become a Democratic force to be reckoned with – a prominence she suggested the party leadership was aware of, noting she was given several prominent committee assignments in an effort to keep her busy – and likely out of their hair.
‘I was assigned to 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 said.
The New York lawmaker was assigned to the House Financial Services Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform – both panels are investigating President Donald Trump.
In the hour-long interview with the New Yorker, Ocasio-Cortez touched on many topics, including her recent visit to the border to visit immigrants being held in detention facilities there and her thoughts on the 2020 presidential campaign.
But it’s her ‘catfight’ with Pelosi that has garnered the most attention in recent days – including a public mocking from White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway.
Ocasio-Cortez described governing in Washington D.C. a ‘mess’ and complained too much power was given to the speaker.
‘I’ve been pretty shocked at the concentration of power internally,’ she said of her arrival on Capitol Hill in January.
She noted there is an ‘insane amount of power in a handful of people,’ including Pelosi as Speaker of the House.
Ocasio-Cortez said she didn’t think Pelosi was annoyed at her for turning down a spot on the Select Committee on Climate Change, which Ocasio-Cortez said she did because the speaker wouldn’t meet her conditions for joining the group – a timetable to draft legislation, subpoena power, and no member on the panel could take fossil fuel money.
The freshman lawmaker also said Democratic leadership was too busy trying to preserve the Democratic majority to worry much about her.
‘I think leadership, their primary goal right now, is making sure everyone who won a swing seat comes back. So I think that’s where a lot of their time, rightfully, I think justifiably invested,’ Ocasio-Cortez said.
House Democrats have struggled with their new power dynamic in the wake of the 2018 election – the group of young, diverse, more liberal lawmakers versus the more moderate wing of the party.
Pelosi has struggled to balance those broader tensions in the party.
The progressive Democrat from New York said Democrats who voted along with Republicans on the spending plan were making a huge mistake in trusting President Trump to address issues at the border.
And one of the most prominent women in Trump’s White House – counselor Kellyanne Conway – injected herself into the battle when she called it a ‘major meow moment’ and a ‘catfight’ during an interview on Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning.
‘Major meow moment, a brushing back in a huge catfight. Really ridiculing them,’ Conway said.
Ocasio-Cortez responded by calling out the sexist nature of the term ‘catfight’ and ridiculing Republicans for not having ‘elected enough women’ to see that sometimes ‘two adult women happen to disagree with each other.’
Trump adviser kellyanne Conway called a disagreement between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a ‘huge catfight’ on Fox & Friends on Tuesday.
”Catfight’ is the sexist term Republicans use when two adult women happen to disagree with each other. The reason they find it so novel & exciting is bc the GOP haven’t elected enough women themselves to see that it can, in fact, be a normal occurrence in a functioning democracy,’ Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
And Pressley, a Democratic congresswoman from Massachusetts, slammed Conway as well, accusing her of trying to cause a distraction from what was happening on the border.
‘@KellyannePolls oh hi Distraction Becky. Remember that time your boss tore babies from their mothers’ arms and threw them in cages? Yeah take a seat and keep my name out of your lying mouth,’ she tweeted in response.
Pressley was on the trip to the border last week where several members of Congress visited detention facilities and highlighted the treatment of migrants being held there.
The freshman lawmaker also had words for Pelosi and her comment to the Times.
‘I do not believe that that advances the cause, or helps our party or strengthens us going into 2020,’ she told Boston NPR affiliate WGBH.