Ocasio-Cortez Slams GOP for Fact-Checking Her Claim That World Will End in 12 Years

“But the GOP is basically Dwight from The Office so who knows.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., criticized the GOP this weekend for fact-checking questionable statements she’s made in the past, such as claiming “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.

In a Sunday afternoon tweet, the freshman congresswoman claimed that Republicans show their lack of “social intelligence” when they take her words at face value, when in fact they are obvious attempts at “dry humor.” Ocasio-Cortez was replying to a series of tweets from Philadelphia trial lawyer Max Kennerly, who was defending the democratic socialist against critics.

“This is a technique of the GOP, to take dry humor + sarcasm literally and ‘fact check’ it,” she said, before referencing widely criticized remarks she made in January that exaggerated the imminence of the threat posed by climate change.

“Like the ‘world ending in 12 years’ thing, you’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal. But the GOP is basically Dwight from The Office so who knows,” Ocasio-Cortez added.

Several commentators were unpersuaded by Ocasio-Cortez’s attempts to pass off dubious pass statements as obvious jokes, noting that in some cases she’d referenced experts in making her claims.

“Haha pretending that everyone else is stupid for taking her ‘the world is going to end in 12 years’ seriously after repeatedly attributing it to ‘scientists’ is Major League gaslighting,” tweeted NRSC senior advisor Matt Whitlock in reply to the New York Democrat.

The Bronx-born lawmaker’s comments were sparked by backlash over remarks she made Saturday, in which seemed to walk back her promises to tax the rich.

In a lengthy Twitter thread about her political vision, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged that some Americans might now see her as wealthy given her congressional salary and healthcare benefits. But she clarified that she had never meant “rich” to refer to people like herself.

Rather, Ocasio-Cortez said, she had always wanted to tax just “like 10 people.”

In bombastic language, she listed the kinds of people she had been thinking of when she suggested hiking the marginal tax rate on income above $10 million and introducing a wealth tax: Education Secretary Betsy Devos, people with large yachts and people in the private prison, student-loan and oil industries.

“Because THAT kind of rich is simply not good for society,” she declared.

Ocasio-Cortez’s definition of rich would also seem to exempt from higher taxes someone like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a fellow leftist with whom she on Thursday proposed capping credit card interest rates. Sanders last month outed himself as a millionaire.

A number of commentators called Ocasio-Cortez’s definition of rich arbitrary and self-serving. Former White House Press Secretary tweeted that the freshman congresswoman seemed to include “people who do things she doesn’t like.”

In January, while speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event with Ta-Nahesi Coates, Ocasio-Cortez made a controversial plea regarding the existential threat posted to humanity by climate change.

WATCH: Ocasio-Cortez Claims The World Will End In 12 Years

“Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we’re like: The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?” Ocasio-Cortez told Coates. “This is the war — this is our World War II.”

Shortly after Ocasio-Cortez’s statement, Axios reported that prominent climate scientists characterized the notion that the world would end in 12 years because of climate change as false.

About Post Author

Follow Us