Left-wing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is called out as a “pariah” in Congress in a new book that claims her often headline-making antics alienated members of her own party and created clashes with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
According to a new book, “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution,” which is due out Tuesday, the New York Democrat “wanted to remake the system and to be thanked for doing it,” creating a level of hostility from fellow progressives in Congress up to top Democrat, Pelosi.
Winning her New York election in 2018 against an established Democrat at the age of just 28, Ocasio-Cortez became the left-leaning media’s darling for a time and amassed a giant following on social media. But, according to the new book by The Intercept’s Ryan Grim, the former Manhattan bartender “sacrificed her relationship with colleagues” on the way and bucked Democrats by repeatedly voting in opposition to them.
“While AOC started her political career with a bang, Grim explains that her arrogance led her to become ‘closed off’ to meeting donors, repeatedly canceling meetings at the last minute, and ‘infuriating’ her critics with her infamous ‘Tax the Rich’ dress at the 2021 Met Gala,” Daily Mail reported.
“Grim claims that AOC’s signature achievement, the Green New Deal, was a ‘total s***show disaster’ and that the botched rollout left critics joking she wanted to ban cows from farting,” the outlet continued.
Grim, the Washington bureau chief for The Intercept, draws attention to Ocasio-Cortez’s at-times tense relationship with Pelosi in the book, detailing how the then-House speaker spoke to the freshman congresswoman in 2018 about one of AOC’s signature policy stances.
“Getting Pelosi’s unfiltered thoughts was both eye-opening and disturbing,” Grim writes. “Ocasio-Cortez, who had made the slogan ‘Abolish Ice’ [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] central to her challenge to Crowley, was particularly perplexed to hear Pelosi say that the phrase had been injected into American political discourse by the Russians and that Democrats needed to quash it.”
According to the author, “AOC wondered, ‘This is how the leader of the party thinks?’”
“The next time Pelosi came to New York, she tried to connect … but AOC’s staff slow-walked things long enough to dodge the meeting and … ducked efforts to schedule calls,” Grim noted.
He also highlighted what he sees as the “irreconcilable contradiction” with Ocasio-Cortez.
“While somebody like Obama wants to be seen as being all things to all people, Ocasio Cortez actually thinks she can be all things to all people while leading a political revolution,” Grim’s book states. “She believed she could occupy the Speaker’s office and have Pelosi appreciate it.”
The book details examples of AOC alienating other progressives in Congress who may have otherwise been allies.
“The gap between AOC’s power outside the Capitol and the display of it on day one inside could hardly have been greater. Tensions flared from day one of AOC’s time in Congress when she and two other progressive representatives voted against their own party,” Grim writes. “To reshape that landscape she was rapidly sacrificing her relationships with colleagues.”
According to Daily Mail:
The ‘growing hostility’ towards AOC was built on a ‘strong wariness’ on the part of House Democrats who saw in the celebration of the Squad a ‘challenge to their own integrity’, the book claims.
More tensions erupted after AOC was overlooked for the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means. AOC didn’t even get a place on the committee to look into climate change – but she claimed Pelosi had offered her a spot but she turned it down.
Amid mudslinging from both sides, AOC claimed that under the Pelosi regime there had been an ‘explicit singling out of newly elected women of color’ – which the former Speaker denied.
AOC’s attempt to turn on the charm with colleagues reportedly failed because of growing suspicions and that they could “not accept and even have a working relationship with someone from a different party faction,” according to Grim who added, “They simply didn’t believe that Ocasio-Cortez didn’t plan to oust them.”
Grim noted how the lawmaker also sparked fury when she attended the Met Gala in September 2021 wearing a dress with the words ‘Tax the Rich’ emblazoned on it, recounting the calls of hypocrisy and that the move “infuriated every organization that had either been told she couldn’t attend their event or, more commonly, simply been ignored by her office.”
