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”
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 https://t.co/HChBp04c8W
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 29, 2019
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