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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasts conditions at migrant detention centers

Border Patrol pushes back, says Democratic lawmaker's accusations aren't true; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back Saturday night after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized her and other far-left freshmen congresswomen for voting against a $4.6 billion border bill that President Trump signed into law on Monday.

Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez clash drags on, threatening Democratic unity. Democrats worry about long-term implications of the feud between the speaker and the freshman firebrand.

Congress had approved the bill with help from moderate Democrats – and in a New York Times interview Pelosi slammed the progressive wing of her party for not also supporting the humanitarian-assistance measure.

• Ocasio-Cortez lamented that the longtime Democratic leaders, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, spent years concentrating power without any “real grooming of a next generation of leadership.” The New York congresswoman’s scathing critique of the top Democrats appears to be a far cry from her own previous rhetoric.
• Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that the Democratic Party leadership needs to change, after earlier refusing to buck Nancy Pelosi’s bid for Speakership to force a vote on a universal healthcare program. “I do think that we need new leadership in the Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez said during an interview on the Intercept’s podcast on Wednesday.

“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”

But Ocasio-Cortez took a different view.

“That public ‘whatever’ is called public sentiment,” Ocasio-Cortez answered later in a Twitter message. “And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country.”

In a separate message, Ocasio-Cortez also defended the use of social media by herself and her fellow newcomers to Congress, over the more traditional – and often more expensive and time-consuming — methods favored by longer-serving lawmakers.

“I find it strange when members act as though social media isn’t important,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “They set millions of [dollars] on [fire] to run TV ads so people can see their message.

“I haven’t dialed for dollars *once* this year,” she added, “& have more time to do my actual job. Yet we’d rather campaign like it’s 2008.”

Ocasio-Cortez also criticized the Democrats who decided to vote along with Republicans on the spending plan to address issues at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I don’t believe it was a good idea for Dems to blindly trust the Trump admin when so many kids have died in their custody. It’s a huge mistake,” she wrote. “This admin also refuses to hand over docs to Congress on the whereabouts of families. People’s lives are getting bargained, & for what?”

In a Washington Post op-ed published Friday, author Ryan Grim writes that Ocasio-Cortez sees older Democrats as too eager to compromise with Republicans, whom she regards as “clowns.”

“Ocasio-Cortez told me that she treats Republicans like buffoons because that’s how they’ve behaved for as long as she can remember,” Grim writes. “’Even before I was of voting age, I saw Republicans accuse the Obamas of doing a ‘terrorist fist bump,’ so they’ve been clowns since I was a teen,’ she said.”

“Ocasio-Cortez told me that she treats Republicans like buffoons because that’s how they’ve behaved for as long as she can remember.”

Meanwhile, some Republicans and other critics have called Ocasio-Cortez hypocritical for opposing the border bill, which her critics say was designed to address many of the problems that she and other far-left Democrats have been complaining about in recent weeks.

“People like AOC create the disaster, refuse to fix it, vote against funding to help people and then go down there to attack the people who are saying to her, ‘We don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough facilities,’” former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” last week, calling Ocasio-Cortez 'viciously dishonest.'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested in a new interview that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should no longer lead Democrats in Congress, and complained that the party had failed at grooming a “next generation” of younger lawmakers to succeed them.

“I do think that we need new leadership in the Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told The Intercept in an interview published Wednesday. Spokespeople for Pelosi and Schumer did not immediately return an email seeking comment on Ocasio-Cortez’s interview.

The remarks from the freshman congresswoman and superstar of the party’s left wing represented her most direct criticism yet of Pelosi and Schumer, and come as Democrats are locked in a fierce debate over their broader message following a disappointing showing in 2020 congressional races across the country.

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Schumer, who is 70 years old, was reelected as leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus last month, and Pelosi is positioned to be reelected as speaker in January — all but ensuring the House Democratic Caucus will continue to be governed by the same octogenarian triumvirate that has occupied the party’s top three leadership roles for the past 14 years: the 80-year-old Pelosi, 81-year-old House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and 80-year-old House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.).

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Pelosi has indicated her next term as speaker will be her last, but Ocasio-Cortez lamented in the interview that even the party’s more moderate members have struggled to produce “viable alternatives” to challenge her leadership. “I think one of the things that I have struggled with — I think that a lot of people struggle with — is [that] the internal dynamics of the House has made it such that there’s very little option for succession, if you will,” she said.

Video: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell congratulates Biden (ABC News)