AOC Blasts McConnell For “Choking, Groping” Photo

The Washington Post reports:

The young men wear matching shirts from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)’s campaign, and cluster around a cardboard cutout of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Several of them hold their thumbs down. One grasps the life-size poster by the waist and pretends to kiss the congresswoman. Another appears to mime his hand around her neck.

To Ocasio-Cortez, the photo — originally posted to Instagram and then made viral on Twitter on Monday — suggested an endorsement of violent misogyny. “Are you paying for young men to practice groping & choking members of Congress w/ your payroll, or is this just the standard culture of #TeamMitch?” Ocasio-Cortez asked on Twitter on Monday night.

McConnell’s campaign answered in the negative to both questions, saying in a statement that it “in no way condones” the image and also noting that the men are high school students with no official affiliation.

The students reportedly attend Liberty Christian Academy.

Pictured: seven young white men in “Team Mitch” T-shirts, gathered round a distressed looking cardboard @AOC, groping and kissing her. The caption, “break me off a piece of that.”

Future federal judges of America. pic.twitter.com/t877J7Pcye

— feminist next door (@emrazz) August 5, 2019