AOC Votes Against Resolution Honoring Charlie Kirk
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez repeatedly quoted Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on Friday to paint him as an “uneducated” and “ignorant” person.
Ocasio-Cortez was one of the 58 Democrats to vote against a resolution to honor the life of Kirk and praise him as a “courageous American patriot” who “lived out his faith with conviction, courage, and compassion.”
Ahead of the vote, Ocasio-Cortez made several claims about Kirk to argue that the resolution would “bring great pain” to Americans who faced “segregation, Jim Crow, and the legacy of bigotry.”
“We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was. A man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted black Americans the right to vote was a mistake. Who after the violent attack on Paul Pelosi said, ‘some amazing patriot’ should bail out his brutal assailant and accused Jews of controlling ‘not just the colleges, it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.’ His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant, uneducated and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans far from ‘working tirelessly to promote unity’ asserted by the majority in this resolution,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Several liberals and left-leaning outlets have made false claims about Kirk and have repeatedly misquoted him. The New York Times had to issue a correction after it falsely accused Kirk of saying that Jewish communities are “pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites” that they want people to stop using against them. In actuality, he criticized a tweet which made that claim.
The Washington Post fired columnist Karen Attiah for falsely accusing Kirk of saying “black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously,” though Kirk never made this claim. In reality, Kirk made this claim about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, former first lady Michelle Obama, Democratic Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and former MSNBC host Joy Reid, who all admitted that they only got to where they were because of affirmative action.
“If we would have said three weeks ago […] that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative-action picks, we would have been called racist. But now they’re comin’ out and they’re saying it for us! They’re comin’ out and they’re saying, ‘I’m only here because of affirmative action.’ Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously,” Kirk said during a July 13, 2023, episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show.”
Ocasio-Cortez accused Republicans of attacking free speech by supporting the firing of people who openly celebrated Kirk’s assassination. She specifically pointed to the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show after he falsely mocked conservatives for denying that the assassin was “one of them,” though his family confirmed he was left-wing and strongly supported transgender issues.
Please make a small donation to the Tampa Free Press to help sustain independent journalism. Your contribution enables us to continue delivering high-quality, local, and national news coverage.
Connect with us: Follow the Tampa Free Press on Facebook and Twitter for breaking news and updates.
Sign up: Subscribe to our free newsletter for a curated selection of top stories delivered straight to your inbox.
