As rumors swirl about who will succeed President Joe Biden, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) argued there’s no guarantee Democrats will unite behind Vice President Kamala Harris and blasted her Democratic colleagues, listing some of the biggest obstacles to moving in that direction.
“I want to talk to you about all the craziness that we’re seeing in the media about Joe Biden, and I’m just ripping the band-aid off because I think it’s really important that people know the truth,” she said in a live chat, offering her thoughts on the furor surrounding Biden’s transition.
“I feel like there’s been a lot of smokescreens put up around this and people aren’t getting the full story here. I want to put all my cards on the table because I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m telling you all that as me. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what’s going on, but I believe you all deserve to know what I see in this moment as I see it. And I’m going to explain my thoughts to you. If you don’t agree with me, if you think it’s terrible, if you think I’m wrong, that’s fine, but at least I want you to know what I see and we can all come to our own conclusions,” she said, beginning by acknowledging that the debate “was awful.” However, she softened the blow for Biden by saying the debate “was awful for everybody” and claiming that it wasn’t just President Joe Biden who did poorly.
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She also called former President Donald Trump a “neo-Nazi” and a “racist” less than a week after the nearly assassination of the president. Additionally, AOC said “everyone is afraid of President Trump,” which is making some people reconsider Biden.
But Ocasio-Cortez also discussed the difficulty of breaking with Biden, saying she was not there to “attack” people who hold those views, but blasted colleagues who spoke anonymously about it.
“What I’m seeing right now, and I want you to know, is that over the last few weeks, a number of Democrats have been providing anonymous tidbits of feedback to the press, to some journalists, in print. I’m not here to criticize the press. I’m here to criticize my colleagues,” she said, calling it “bullshit.”
“I’m not blaming those who have put their names out there in public, because I’ve done it a lot myself, God knows. I’m talking about those who are too scared to say what they want to say in public, but are not afraid to say what they want to say to journalists if they promise not to use their names. That’s ridiculous!” she continued, slamming everyone who didn’t raise this argument a year ago.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez then said there was no guarantee Democrats would unite behind Harris.
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“If you think there’s a consensus among people who want Joe Biden to go, that they’ll support Kamala and Vice President Harris, you’re mistaken,” the far-left congresswoman said.
“A lot of them aren’t just interested in getting rid of the president. They’re interested in getting rid of all the nominees,” she said, explaining, “A large part of the donor class, a large part of the elite, a large part of the people that I see in this room who are pressuring President Biden not to be the nominee, are not even interested in the vice president being the nominee.”
“Will they win that? I don’t know. But my point here is, don’t take it for granted,” she added, warning of the legal battles that would result and saying that ultimately the decision to remove Biden should not be “made by groupthink, momentum or inertia.”
“We really need to think about the consequences, and if the data, logistics and so on support a different path, then by all means do so,” she said.
“But the idea of talking about what’s best in theory is… this is not 2023. And, you know, people say the polls are just momentum. That may be true, but have you ever thought about what’s driving that? Because, like I just said, I think there are hundreds of millions of media dollars being made off of people like members of Congress saying things privately. And, again, I may be wrong. I may be wrong. I’m not here to tell you what this is,” she said, adding, “But what I am here to tell you about are some of the red alerts that I’m seeing on the dashboard – issues of concern that are not being adequately addressed.”
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Congressman @AOC During the roughly hour-long live broadcast, she expressed serious concerns about replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee.
Here’s the full video, minus the very short intro about other work she’s currently working on. pic.twitter.com/eeVWhRUlwC
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) July 19, 2024
Her comments come as rumors swirl that Biden could resign as soon as this weekend, according to Democratic officials who spoke to Axios, but the Biden campaign denies this despite further reports that senior Democratic figures are working behind the scenes to end Biden’s political career.
