The office for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) will be hanging a “help wanted” sign soon after two of her top aides resigned abruptly on Friday.
Saikat Chakrabarti resigned as the chief of staff for Ocasio-Cortez after a seriesof controversies over his comments that led to a recriminations from the Democratic establishment and the progressive upstarts in the party.
Her communications director Corbin Trent also resigned from her D.C. office, but he is leaving so that he can work on the Ocasio-Cortez 2020 campaign.
“Saikat has decided to leave the office of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to work with New Consensus to further develop plans for a Green New Deal,” Trent said in a statement.
“We are extraordinarily grateful for his service to advance a bold agenda and improve the lives of the people in NY-14,” Trent added. “From his co-founding of Justice Democrats to his work on the Ocasio-Cortez campaign and in the official office, Saikat’s goal has always been to do whatever he can to help the larger progressive movement, and we look forward to continuing working with him to do just that.”
Chakrabarti started a firestorm when he mocked the moderates of the Democratic party by comparing them to segregationists. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) berated the progressive members of the party in a closed door meeting about the comments.
“Do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that is OK,” she reportedly said.
“Our Democracy is literally falling apart,” Chakrabarti responded on Twitter. “I’m not interested in substance-less Twitter spats.”
In another misstep, Chakrabarti admitted in an interview that the Green New Deal was crafted in order to seize the economy, not to fix the climate.
“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti said.
“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti asked. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,”
Critics of the climate change legislation pounced on the revelation to bolster their accusations that the socialist Democrats were using the climate change controversy in order to further their statist goals.
*story by The Blaze