AOC Is Not Having Rep. Ted Yoho’s Lame Fauxpology

NPR reports:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., took to the House floor Thursday morning to admonish the insults hurled at her by Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., earlier this week. Yoho confronted Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of the Capitol on Monday, calling her “disgusting” for linking poverty to crime rates in New York City.

“I was minding my own business walking up the steps, and Rep. Yoho put his finger in my face. He called me disgusting. He called me crazy. He called me out of my mind. And he called me dangerous,” she said.

“This issue is not about one incident. It is cultural. It is a culture of lack of impunity, of accepting of violence and violent language against women and an entire structure of power that supports that,” she said.

Yahoo News reports:



The freshman Democrat, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress began her speech by describing their encounter, which she recounted in an exclusive interview with Yahoo News. Ocasio-Cortez said she was walking up the steps of the U.S. Capitol when Yoho, who was walking with Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, “suddenly turned a corner” and “accosted me.”

“I want to be clear that Rep. Yoho’s comments were not deeply hurtful or piercing because I have worked a working-class job,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who was a bartender before she won her U.S. House seat in 2018. “I have waited tables in restaurants. I have ridden the subway. I have walked the streets in New York City. And this kind of language is not new.

“I have encountered words uttered by Mr. Yoho and men uttering the same words as Mr. Yoho while I was being harassed in restaurants. I have tossed men out of bars that have used language like Mr. Yoho’s, and I have encountered this type of harassment riding the subway in New York City.”