It should come as no surprise, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continues to demonstrate her lack of basic civics knowledge, despite the fact that she will be sworn in in early January as a member of Congress. This time, she displayed her ignorance while musing that she might run for president.
The uninformed remarks came as she was participating in a photoshoot for Politico at Harvard last Thursday. She boasted that she might next run for president, upon which the photographer remarked that she was only 29 years old. “You can’t even run for president for another six years,” Politico’s Playbook reported the photographer as responding. A person is not eligible, under the Constitution, for election to the presidency until reaching a minimum age of 35.
Ocasio-Cortez’s response indicated that she believed the Constitution also did not allow a female to even serve as president.
“No, not for a long time. Thank God. Although we’ve been joking that because the Equal Rights Amendment hasn’t been passed yet, the Constitution technically says he cannot run unless he’s 35 … So what we’ll do is we’ll force the Republican Party to pass the Equal Rights Amendment by threatening to run for president.” (Emphasis added).
The photographer replied, “That is awesome. All the people who say a literal interpretation of the Constitution is the only thing you should be paying attention to.”
“Exactly, all those Constitutionalists, I will keep vigilance.”
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Apparently, Ocasio-Cortez and the photographer both have a low regard for the actual wording of the Constitution, but in this case, she apparently does not even know the actual wording of the Constitution in respect to the qualifications for president. The Constitution does not say he cannot run, but rather uses the term “any person.”
Article II of the Constitution states, “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.”
In the literal language, then, of the Constitution, being a male is not a requirement to serve as president. But as is typical of leftists such as Ocasio-Cortez, they see sexism just about everywhere, even where none exists. Her latest gaffe, along with previous demonstrations of her lack of knowledge of civics, raises the question of exactly what is taught in America’s colleges and universities. After all, she holds a degree in international relations from Boston University.
Sadly, it appears that so much time is spent in far too many institutions of higher learning advancing the latest liberal cause, that they simply do not have time to teach the basics of American government that the average middle school student should know.
It is a basic tenet of American government, for example, that the federal government is divided into three branches — the legislative, the executive, and the judicial — and the legislative branch is further divided into two chambers, the House of Representatives and the Senate. But, while making a video last month for the radical leftist group Justice Democrats (she proudly calls herself a socialist), Ocasio-Cortez said that she and her fellow Democrats need to “make sure we take back all three chambers of Congress — rather all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate and the House in 2020.”
Despite correcting herself that there are not three chambers of Congress, she nevertheless did say that there are three chambers of government. To compound her error, she then identifies “the three chambers of government” as the presidency, the Senate and the House. Somehow, she failed to mention the third branch of the government — the federal courts — while mistakenly making the Senate and the House two, instead of one, branch of government.
Rather than admit her mistake when called on it by a Republican member of Congress, she retorted, “Maybe instead of Republicans drooling over every minute of footage of me in slow-mo, waiting to chop up word slips that I correct in real-time [which she did not actually correct, as shown above], they actually step up enough to make the argument they want to make: that they don’t believe people deserve a right to healthcare.”
Exactly what her ignorance had to do with healthcare is not clear, but it is a common liberal diversionary tactic when confronted with a problem. Speaking of healthcare, Ocasio-Cortez has offered “Medicare for all” as a healthcare solution, and when challenged as to how it would be paid for, she responded, “You just pay for it.”
In typical narcissistic fashion, she has also compared her upset victory over an establishment Democrat to the moon landing, the civil rights movement, and the nation’s electrification. To which former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee responded in a tweet, “Big difference. Moon landing was LUNAR, not LOONEY.”
We should add a word of caution to those who consider Ocasio-Cortez to be just another uninformed leftist. She is that for sure, but her views are shared — unfortunately — by far too many Americans who either do not know or reject basic principles of the limited government established by the Founders. Many in France in the late 1700s no doubt considered the views of radical secret societies such as the Jacobins and the Illuminati as “looney” as those of Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow leftists, until they brought out the guillotines.
It is really no laughing matter.
Photo: AP Images
