Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) fired back at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) after he branded her a “parasite” for receiving a government paycheck and suggesting that billionaires couldn’t have earned all their money.
“I recognize for her –– given that she was a bartender –– that’s probably true, and there is no disrespect to bartenders,” Cruz told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “Bartenders are an honorable profession. But she went from that to being a government employee and a parasite sucking on the taxpayer.”
The progressive firebrand hit back at Cruz’s comments while taking shots at the senator’s Ivy League education, suggesting it gave him a warped perspective of the average American.
“It’s not a secret the disdain that Ted Cruz has for people who work working-class jobs. It’s not a secret what he thinks of the waitresses, the line cooks — he thinks that we’re less than him,” Ocasio-Cortez told journalist Pablo Manríquez outside the Capitol on Tuesday. “He thinks that because he has a Harvard degree and never scrubbed a table, that that makes him better than someone who has actually had to work for a living.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who has been touted as a potential 2028 Democratic candidate for president, made the billionaire comments on the podcast “It’s Open with Ilana Glazer” last Thursday.
“You can’t earn a billion dollars,” she told Glazer. “You just can’t earn that. You can get market power. You can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn that.”
Ocasio-Cortez is a favorite target of conservatives, who frequently mock her former occupation to criticize her comments on wealth inequality. Others on the right have used her bartending experience as a cudgel to disparage her fitness for public office, despite the fact that she holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations and economics from Boston University.
