“Stalker-adjacent” says Joy Ann Reid, MSNBC
Let’s face it: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lives rent-free in Tucker Carlson’s head. Since her election to Congress in 2018, the Fox News host has devoted an enormous — if not downright obsessive — amount of mental energy to discrediting and mocking the New York congresswoman. Tucker even has his own special nickname for the object of his fixations: Sandy Cortez.
Tucker, leaning into his reputation as a serial agitator, continued his ongoing attacks against Ocasio-Cortez on Tucker Carlson Tonight Friday evening, devoting nearly 20 minutes to a segment that purported to be about an upcoming book about the congresswoman — but instead covered everything from his bizarre insistence that AOC, a Latina, is not a “woman of color,” to over-analyzing years-old Instagram posts.
The most egregious of Carlson’s comments came after the host revisited a 2019 Instagram Live in which AOC spent an evening inside her apartment assembling Ikea furniture, eating popcorn and speaking to her viewers. Calling the congresswoman a “crazed solipsist,” Carlson proceeds to latch on to an incredibly benign statement made by AOC in the video: “I’m alone today.”
“Is it just us, or does that sound like an invitation to a booty call?” Carlson suggests. “Maybe one step from ‘What are you wearing?’ Either way it’s a little strange, definitely over-sharing.” (By the way — it’s just you, Tucker.)
Carlson’s leap of logic prompted an immediate response from the congresswoman, who quickly took to Twitter to address the Fox host’s statements.
“Remember when the right wing had a meltdown when I suggested they exhibit obsessive impulses around young women?” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Well now Tucker Carlson is wishing for… this on national TV. You’re a creep bro. If you’re this easy w/ sexual harassment on air, how are you treating your staff?”
The “booty call” comment was, of course, just the tip of the iceberg. Carlson also used the segment to call AOC a “rich, entitled white lady,” question her ethnic heritage (“There is no place on Earth outside of American colleges and newsrooms where Sandy Cortez would be recognized as a, quote, ‘woman of color.’”), and insult her intelligence (“Painting her own face may be her one real skill.”) In other words, a normal evening in the Tucker Carlson universe.
“This is the type of stuff you say when your name starts with a P and ends with dejo,” AOC tweeted, referring to the Spanish word pendejo, or “asshole.”
