‘Evil imbecile’: AOC drags Kevin McCarthy during marathon floor speech
The ‘squad’ member spent much of Mr McCarthy’s record-long stemwinder mocking him on social media
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Your support makes all the difference.As House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy wound his way through what would become a more than eight-and-a-half hour jeremiad against Democrats’ Build Back Better Act and the Biden administration in general, House Democrats chose to pass the time by mocking the California congressman.
One of them, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, made her thoughts known both on and off the floor.
At one point during Mr McCarthy’s stemwinder, the GOP leader suggested that voters did not elect President Joe Biden to be another transformational president in the mould of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or “another FDR”.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s voice then rang out in the House chamber.
“I did!” she exclaimed.
Later that night, the Bronx Democrat took to her Instagram live channel to continue slamming Mr McCarthy from the Democratic cloakroom, located just off the House floor.
“This man clearly will not stop talking but has nothing to say,” she said, joined by Maryland Rep Jamie Raskin.
For his part, Mr Raskin added that Mr McCarthy was “more upset about climate action and universal pre-K and Medicare covering hearing [aids]” than he was “about his own guy, [Arizona Representative Paul] Gosar, creating a violent homicidal cartoon that he put up on the internet and refused to take down”.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez opened her livestream by declaring that she was broadcasting “live” from the cloakroom during “one of the worst, lowest-quality speeches” she has ever witnessed.
Addressing the variety of Mr McCarthy’s vocabulary, Ms Ocasio-Cortez opined: “If you’re going to be evil, you might as well be an evil genius” and trailed off while searching for a more descriptive word for the Californian.
Mr Raskin chimed in with “imbecile,” at which point she agreed.
“Imbecile!” she said. “At least give us some pizzazz with the undercutting of social safety nets!”
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