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CNN: Conservatives Attack Ocasio-Cortez Because She is a ‘Charismatic’ Latina

by Don Irvine on

CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson was asked Monday why freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is the focus of so much attention by conservatives after a clip played of Trump supporters at a recent rally where they chanted “AOC Sucks” when Donald Trump, Jr. was at the podium.

“Well, she’s incredibly charismatic. She is in some ways a symbol of where the country is going in terms of demographics. She is, a young Latina woman who upset a Democrat in New York and she’s incredibly eloquent in terms of talking about Democratic Party values,” Henderson explained.

“And I think she’s probably right, this idea that she’s the new bogeywoman, the old bogeywoman obviously was Hillary Rodham Clinton.  We remember those chants of, ‘lock her up, lock her up.’ They’ve moved on from that and found a new bogeywoman in — in AOC,” she continued. “But listen, I mean, she’s somebody who’s got a real following on the left and probably has a real future in the party even as the people in the Democratic Party who are a little nervous about the kind of platform she has, but I expect you’ll probably hear more of that at those Trump rallies.”

Henderson’s sentiments relating to Clinton echoed what was written in the April 1 Time magazine cover story which called Ocasio Cortez a “political phenomenon,” while noting that Democrats appear to be afraid of her given her star media status at the moment.

Ocasio-Cortez has fired back at her conservative critics by tweeting that “It’s almost as though there is a directed + concerted far-right propaganda machine with a whole cable news channel, and a dark-money internet operation propped up by the Mercers et al dedicated to maligning me & stoking nat’l division, reported on by @JaneMayerNYer or something”

There is no doubt that Ocasio-Cortez has garnered the spotlight–her Twitter followers have grown from roughly 41,000 last summer to 3.8 million today dwarfing Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has 2.4 million followers.
While Henderson sang the praises of Ocasio-Cortez she failed to mention that the freshman representative has committed numerous gaffes since taking office including her most recent on at a town hall on her Green New Deal on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes where she accused Republicans of amending the constitution to prevent FDR from being reelected in 1948.
“They had to amend the constitution of the United States to make sure Roosevelt did not get reelected,” she told Hayes. “There were so many extraordinary things that were happening at that time that were uniting working people.”
Roosevelt died in 1945 and the 22nd Amendment was approved by Congress in 1947 and ratified in 1951.
A recent Gallup poll reveals that Ocasio-Cortez’s unfavorable ratings are now at 41 percent, a 15 point jump since their last poll in September.

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