Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is well-known for her high-profile Twitter feuds, and her “clapbacks” have earned her much fanfare among liberal Twitter addicts. But the New York socialist’s latest social media sparring leaves her looking either extraordinarily stupid or deeply deceitful.
The feud started when Dispatch editor at large Jonah Goldberg replied to Ocasio-Cortez and called her anti-rich rhetoric “dumb and dishonest.” “You could confiscate every penny held by every billionaire and multimillionaire in America and it wouldn’t cover a fraction of your Green New Deal fantasy,” he tweeted.
Goldberg was referring to Ocasio-Cortez’s landmark “Green New Deal” proposal, which includes policies such as socialist healthcare via “Medicare for all,” upgrading every building in the United States, a federal job guarantee, “free” college, and more. Estimates put its total cost at up to $93 trillion, which is $600,000 per household.
Goldberg is, of course, correct — confiscating all the money from American billionaires and millionaires wouldn’t even come close to funding that.
Here’s where Ocasio-Cortez comes in.
“Hey there! Totally get it if you’ve never bothered to read the legislation you’re commenting so authoritatively on,” she replied to Goldberg’s tweet. “The Green New Deal is a non-binding resolution of values. It does not have a price tag or CBO score and costs us $0 if passed.”
For some bizarre reason, media outlets such as the Hill described this nonresponse as a “clapback.” This clearly slants the story in Ocasio-Cortez’s favor even though all the facts are against her.
Ocasio-Cortez can accurately say that there was no Congressional Budget Office score for her proposal. But the idea that this makes it cost less or free is simply false — a lie. The Green New Deal proposal includes a number of specific, very expensive policies, which is where the $93 trillion estimate comes from. Even if that number is just a projection, it’s certainly a lot closer to the truth than zero.
Ocasio-Cortez is either not equipped with the kindergarten-level mental faculties required to understand this, in which case she should reconsider her career choices, or she knows it and just decided to be deeply dishonest.
This latest “clapback” is not a clapback at all but simply more “dumb and dishonest” rhetoric from another dumb and dishonest politician.
*story by The Washington Examiner