In a very good interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes the case for her politics and what drives her aspirations.
Cooper asked her about all the recent media controversies that right-wingers are promoting against her and she deftly handled each one.
When she's criticized about paying for her initiatives like Medicare For All and free college tuition, she explains how she's being held to a higher standard than anything Trump and the Republicans have done.
After pushing back on Trump's idiotic claims that she's for a Venezuela model, Cooper asked, "How are you going to pay for all of this?"
Ocasio-Cortez replied, "No one asks how we're gonna pay for this space force. No one asks how we pay for a 2 trillion tax cut. We only ask how we pay for it on issues of housing, healthcare, and education. How do we pay for it? With the same mechanisms that we pay for military increases, for the space force ..."
Republicans just lie and lie when they say the wealthy corporate heads and very rich will generously kick back a lot of the cash they received from their insane Republican tax cut.
Cooper asked about her 21 trillion dollar mistake that the Washington Post fact checked and she responded, "I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”
Conservatives jumped all over this but ignored the rest of her statement.
Cooper said, "But being factually correct is important."
She replied, "It's absolutely important and whenever I make a mistake I say, 'Okay, this was clumsy' and then I restate what my point was, but it's not the same thing as the president lying about immigrants...."
You never hear the point where she admits to making an error instead of trying to come up with a way to justify the mistake like most Trump administration surrogates do every day.
Alexandria is being scrutinized more than almost any politician in America right now. She's the latest fixation from Fox News and all the conservative online a-holes. In many regards, they've raised her profile significantly. She has over 2 million Twitter followers already.
It scares Republicans that she's a smart and charismatic left-wing politician.
As Howie Klein writes, "In fact, Miss Ocasio-Cortez now has more twitter followers than any other member of the House. You know why that's important, right? You see how she can bring up ideas that cause everyone from Fox and Fiendsto Rachel to start talking about them and put them into the zeitgeist.
That's a good thing, indeed.
Ocasio-Cortez said Trump's words and actions prove he's a racist. This is obvious to those that do not defend his every move.
And then we come to her "taxing the rich" sentiments that sent Fox News into a frenzy.
She said, ""You look at our tax rates back in the '60s and when you have a progressive tax rate system, your tax rate, let's say from zero to $75,000, may be 10 percent or 15 percent, etc. But once you get to the tippy-tops — on your 10 millionth dollar — sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent. That doesn't mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder, you should be contributing more."
Politifact did a good job explaining her marginal tax idea. Those opposed to it won't bring facts to the table.
Fox and Friends and guest Stuart Varney, are in full freak-out, pretending everyone will be taxed 70% of their income: an utter lie.
As Politifact reports only about 16K people make over 10 million dollars, "that 16,000 would include a lot of superstar athletes, entertainers and hedge-fund financiers" and probably a good number of Fox News and Business hosts as well.
But to Fox News that's the entire country.
VARNEY: The whole point is that in America you do climb that ladder. It's not like in Europe where you inherit your wealth through some kind of aristocracy -- or don't. This is America. Climb the food chain. Move up to the top. You know, go as far as your brains, talent and drive will allow to you go. You don't want the government coming in and say, "Well, you've made too much. You're too aggressive. You're too successful. We're going to take 90 percent off you." That's ridiculous.
KILMEADE: Or they just won't do anything. The most successful people will pull back, say I don't have to do anything, I don't have to create any more jobs, start any more businesses, and I'm going to pull back.
VARNEY: That's precisely what will happen.
DOOCY: I think the key is just don't make $10 million a year.
Lying liars gotta lie.
