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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her three pals known as “The Squad” — Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — to shut up and stop criticizing fellow Democrats on social media.
Ocasio-Cortez fired back with the usual implication that anyone opposing them just might be racist. Pelosi, Ocasio-Cortez said, isn’t respectful enough to “women of color.”
The assessment of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway: It’s a “catfight.”
Toil and Trouble
The trouble began, apparently, when the young Democrats kicked over the litter box because Pelosi didn’t fight against the border bill the House recently passed.
Ocasio Cortez told CNN that “we didn’t even bother to negotiate,” while Omar, a Muslim believed to have married her brother to commit immigration fraud, tweeted that “a vote for Mitch McConnell’s border bill is a vote to keep kids in cages and terrorize immigrant communities.”
These and other comments inspired Pelosi to offer an opinion about Ocasio-Cortez and her Squad to Maureen Dowd of the New York Times:
Pelosi feels that the four made themselves irrelevant to the process by voting against “our bill,” as she put it, which she felt was the strongest one she could get. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” she said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”…
“If the left doesn’t think I’m left enough, so be it,” she said, breezily. “As I say to these people, come to my basement. I have these signs about single-payer from 30 years ago. I understand what they’re saying. But we have a responsibility to get something done, which is different from advocacy. We have to have a solution, not just a Twitter fight.”
Ocasio-Cortez shot back on Twitter: “That public ‘whatever’ is called public sentiment.”
And so yesterday, Buzzfeed reported, Pelosi batted down the mewling kitten during a party caucus pow wow:
In every family you have your moments — Right, do you not have your moments in your family? Do you all agree all the time on everything? Do you? We’re a family and we have our moments and we’re like a kaleidoscope…. We must never undermine the strength of anyone in our caucus.
Continued Pelosi, the Washington Post reported, “You got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it. But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just okay.”
Ocasio-Cortez didn’t get the message and swatted back via Buzzfeed: “It’s not just about Caucus dynamics, this is about children dying in DHS and ICE custody. And that’s ultimately what this is about, this is not about any kind of political dynamic.”
The young lady also complained to a radio station that Pelosi assigned her “two of some of the busiest committees and four subcommittees so my hands are full.”
“They’re trying to keep me busy,” she averred.
After all, if a congresswoman has to work on the committees to which she’s assigned, she can’t post snarky comments and cooking videos on Twitter, or find much time to help illegal aliens who’ve been ordered out of the country escape from immigration authorities.
No Respect
But then came the inevitable. Pelosi, Ocasio-Cortez suggested to the Post, is simply being a racist because she’s “disrespectful” to “women of color.”
The Squad, the Post reported, is “struggling with the speaker’s moves to isolate them.”
Hissed Ocasio-Cortez:
When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood. But the persistent singling out … it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful … the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.
Presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway told Fox News the back-and-forth is a feline feud. It’s “a major ‘meow moment’ — brushing back in a huge catfight, really ridiculing them — and they voted against the Democratic aid package.”
Photo: AP Images
