Source: Anna Moneymaker / Getty
Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez laid into GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for yet more silence in the face of hateful attacks, this time against another Congressional colleague.
AOC’s fellow Democratic congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, has been the focus of renewed racist & Islamophobic attacks as a result of vitriol that has been uttered by Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado comparing her to a suicide bomber and alleging she was trying to harm people on January 6th during the storming of the Capitol last week. Omar then held a press conference on Wednesday (December 1st) to share a vile voicemail calling her the N-word as well as a jihadist. She had been receiving the messages after Boebert’s comments, saying that GOP leadership needed to step up to decry these words. “This kind of hateful rhetoric and actions cannot go without punishment. There has to be accountability. If and when the Republican conference fails to do so, it is going to be our job to do that,” she said.
In a tweet, Ocasio Cortez blasted McCarthy for his silence and unwillingness to take measures to punish Boebert & other Republicans for these attacks. “People truly don’t understand the scale, intensity, & volume of threats targeting @IlhanMN Kevin McCarthy is so desperate to be speaker that he is working with his Ku Klux Klan caucus to look aside & allow violent targeting of woc members of Congress. This cannot be ignored.”, she wrote.
The representative from New York followed that up with another tweet in which she stated that there are no consequences for GOP members when they behave in this way. “They don’t have to pay for the security required from their acts — we do. They make money off it,” she said.
Rep. Boebert has been under fire for her comments, and the public pressure prompted her to issue an apology via her Twitter account saying: “I apologize to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Rep. Omar. I have reached out to her office to speak directly.”
