CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE: Countdown: Top stories of 2018
by WorldTribune Staff, January 6, 2019
Rep. Steve Scalise ended a Twitter debate over taxes with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after several of the Democrat socialist’s followers made references to the 2017 shooting of Scalise by left-wing activist James Hodgkinson.
Scalise, Louisiana Republican, had engaged in the debate with the New York Democrat after reports that she advocated for significantly raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for her “Green New Deal” initiative.
“…she’s got better aim than James Hodgkinson, that’s for sure,” one person tweeted.
“Kick his cane,” another tweeted.
“snipe his a–,” one user wrote. (The user later denied that the post was a call for political violence, writing, “not seeing any violence there sorry” and telling Fox News it referred only to a verbal “sniping.”)
Following the comments, Scalise ended the online discussion, tweeting: “Hi @AOC. Happy to continue this debate on the Floor of the People’s House, but it’s clearly not productive to engage here with some of your radical followers. #StayClassy”
While Ocasio-Cortez had proposed enacting a tax rate of up to 70 percent on top earners, Scalise had called for letting Americans “keep more of their own hard-earned money.”
Scalise wrote that Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez wanted to tax Americans’ income at higher rates in order to “give it to leftist fantasy programs.”
Ocasio-Cortez had tweeted that Scalise didn’t understand “how marginal tax rates work.”
“Oh that’s right, almost forgot,” the Democratic socialist wrote. “GOP works for the corporate CEOs showering themselves multi-million bonuses; not the actual working people whose wages + healthcare they’re ripping off for profit.”
Meanwhile, several major media outlets, without any evidence to back up their reports, claimed that conservatives were criticizing en masse Ocasio-Cortez for a viral video from her college days at Boston University that surfaced last week showing her dancing on a rooftop, The Daily Caller reported on Jan. 5.
The New York Times alleged that the release of the video, which had been circulating on social media for months, was supposed to be a “smear” by the right.
But, “The Times could only find a single anonymous Twitter account mocking the video. The rest of the article was dedicated to leftists cheering her on,” the Daily Caller noted.
The BBC News coverage centered on how Ocasio-Cortez mocked conservative critics of the college dance video. The BBC “failed to quote a single person upset about the video beyond the same anonymous Twitter account,” the Daily Caller’s report said.
Newsweek also cited a single anonymous Twitter user to support its contention that conservatives were “mocking” Ocasio-Cortez.
Vox’s Matthew Yglesias wrote an “explainer” about the right’s “obsession” with Ocasio-Cortez’s days as a teenager, citing a total of four tweets – one of which was from a Twitter account that no longer exists, the Daily Caller’s report said.
The Daily Caller also noted: “GQ, once a magazine that printed arguments about why every man should own $200 socks, declared that right-wing media ‘failed’ to ‘take down’ Ocasio-Cortez and even cited The Daily Caller. Problem is, The Daily Caller never once mocked her for dancing (it remains unclear how the video even opens her up to criticism) but instead poked fun at her socialist policy proposals in a tweet.”
Check Out Geostrategy-Direct __________ Jump Start the U.S. Media
Scalise ends Twitter debate with Ocasio-Cortez after her ‘radical followers’ urge violence added by World Tribune on
View all posts by World Tribune →