In a recent episode of CNN anchor Chris Wallace's HBO Max Show Who's Talking to Chris Wallace? , the person talking to Chris Wallace was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Lucky her!
First of all, it was abundantly clear that Wallace had prepared for an interview with her that was going to be all about Democrats losing horribly on Tuesday. That didn't happen and Democrats did quite well. Despite this, it seemed that the vast majority of Wallace's questions to AOC were along the lines of "Why are you so horrible? Do you think that your being horrible hurts other Democrats? Would Democrats have done better in the midterms if you had perhaps thrown yourself off a cliff while self-flagelating and yelling 'I was wrong to support universal healthcare!'?'"
Much to Wallace's chagrin, Ocasio-Cortez refused to apologize for existing.
In this clip that aired on CNN on Friday, Wallace says "People want both parties to move from the fringes, from the extreme, back to the center."
“CNN's framing of the AOC interview was pretty close to what you'd see on Fox News: "Chris, she does not seem to think, or at least is not saying publicly, that there needs to be a course correction in terms of the Democratic Party, which is interesting"”
— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1668183574
Instead of acknowledging Wallace's conceit, AOC pointed out that "extreme" on the Left and "extreme" on the Right are two very, very different things.
“It’s important for us to dig into the substance of what that actually means,” she said, “As someone who is often … characterized as ‘extreme,’ I, of course, would object to that. I do not believe that I am extreme in the way that Marjorie Taylor Greene on the Republican side is extreme.”
“The idea that there is an equating of … someone who believes in guaranteed universal health care in the United States with someone who believes that undocumented people should incur physical harm — [that those] are somehow in the same level of extreme — is something that I would object to,” she said.
And that is nowhere near the beginning of the horrific and bizarre things Marjorie Taylor Greene believes. That was a gracious characterization. But Wallace was shocked! Neither he nor CNN host Kate Bolduan could believe the audacity she had in not agreeing with his extremely flawed premise.
At another point in the interview, Wallace tried to get her to admit that she was bad by pointing out that Republicans really don't like her and her "crazy" ideas like "socialized medicine" and other things that are the norm around the world and are using them against Democrats in other states.
Transcript via Mediaite:
CHRIS WALLACE: Let’s talk about it on the ground as it played out in the election, because in a number of races you were an issue and Republicans used you, too, in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to go after the people they were running against, take on Washington. Democrats want to keep spending and raise your taxes to do it. And socialized medicine, we really get these crazy ideas. [...] The argument they’re making is Democrats like you have taken the party and the country too far to the left.
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well, we won Pennsylvania, didn’t we? And we’ve overperformed across the country, haven’t we? Because I think that reiterating the fact that we care about health care, talking about things like decriminalizing marijuana and discussing some of these core issues work. But I would also counter that one of the decisive factors in the midterm elections was youth turnout. Youth turnout. And the enthusiasm among young people is what turned a lot of these close races to tip towards Democrats. And one thing that we know about young people is that they are overwhelmingly progressive. They want us to do more. They’re fired up on climate and ... With any figure, with any decision, with any choice — this is leadership. You’re going to take a knock. There are going to be cons. But we can also acknowledge that there are benefits to having robust members of our party that unapologetically champion the working class.
It was at this point that Chris Wallace got up and handed her a hair shirt, pleading with her to put it on, just for a moment. Just so he could know that she finally grasped that thinking healthcare is a human right is exactly as extreme and disturbing as blatant anti-Semitism, expressing one's desire for Christian Nationalism or even White Nationalism or attempting to overthrow congress because you think the election was stolen or banning all of the LGBTQ books at one's local library or going down to said library with one's militia to yell at drag queens for reading story books to children or thinking that Tom Hanks eats babies and wears red shoes sometimes so everyone knows it or attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer or thinking that all of the celebrities and all of the (Democratic) politicians are involved in a Satanic child sex ring based in the non-existent basement of a pizza parlor and that for some reason this involves a lot of performance art.
Whew! I could go on. There are just so many extreme beliefs that are definitely the exact same as "everyone should be able to go to the doctor when they are sick."
In fact, more Americans are probably more willing to accept that lizard people are controlling the world and that Sandy Hook never happened than would be willing to accept paying anything less than $1000 per ambulance ride. It would just be indecent, really.
Is there anything more beautifully American than a company that literally only makes money when they don't give you the thing you pay for? A company where you or you boss pays them money which they then use to pay someone whose entire job it is to tell you "Sorry, we don't actually cover that?" What kind of monster would think it was a good idea to eliminate that middle man?
What kind of strange bohemian peasant would want to pay $10 for a month's supply insulin when they could pay $300 like a fancy rich person?
A very extreme one, that is who.
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