AOC's chief of staff slams Pelosi on Twitter over op-ed controversy: 'Pelosi is just mad that she got outmaneuvered (again)'
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, called out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a series of tweets on Saturday and Sunday after a New York Times opinion piece featuring Pelosi downgraded "the Squad" of freshman congresswomen that includes Ocasio-Cortez.
- Pelosi commented on Ocasio-Cortez, along with Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Presley, saying "All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world, but they didn't have any following. They're four people and that's how many votes they got."
- Chakrabarti criticized Pelosi and the opinion piece, tweeting "All these articles want to claim what a legislative mastermind Pelosi is, but I'm seeing way more strategic smarts from freshman members [...] Pelosi is just mad that she got outmaneuvered (again) by Republicans."
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, called out Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a series of tweets on Saturday and Sunday after her comments denouncing the "following" of freshman congresswomen, including Ocasio-Cortez, ran in a Saturday New York Times opinion piece.
"All these articles want to claim what a legislative mastermind Pelosi is, but I'm seeing way more strategic smarts from freshman members," Chakrabarti tweeted. "Pelosi is just mad that she got outmaneuvered (again) by Republicans."
In the opinion piece, Pelosi refers to "the Squad" of freshman congresswomen that includes Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Presley.
"All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world," Pelosi told The New York Times. "But they didn't have any following. They're four people and that's how many votes they got."
Her comments were in response to The New York Times' opinion writer Maureen Dowd asking about the $4.6 billion emergency funding bill for border security and better conditions at migrant detention centers that Pelosi agreed to, which has been criticized by progressives, including Ocasio-Cortez.
Chakrabarti tweeted that the four congresswomen voted against the bill "because they believed McConnell would go back on his 'promise' to Pelosi that he'd pass the House bill [...] They were right."
He also questioned whether Pelosi was a "legislative mastermind" after her "claims we can't focus on impeachment because it's a distraction from kitchen table issues."
"I'd challenge you to find voters that can name a single thing House Democrats have done for their kitchen table this year," Chakrabarti tweeted.
Then, Chakrabarti tweeted that the four freshman congresswomen "weren't happy about giving a blank check to Trump, but they decided to use their 'public whatever' to bring focus to injustice at the border. Pelosi decided to use hers to belittle her freshman colleagues? This is so baffling."
"We are in a time that calls for leaders to lead," he tweeted next. "Voters want representatives who will fight, even if they lose. The fact that House Democratic leadership doesn't see this is incredibly troubling."
Chakrabarti then criticized Pelosi for "minimizing rape allegations against Trump" in her quotes in the opinion piece, along with "thinking that the House version of the border bill may have passed if Trump was in the country."
On Sunday, he tweeted "Pelosi kept claiming that everyone had to vote for it because it was either this or the worse Senate bill -- that it was the best we could do. And as predicted, Senate killed it anyway. Why not start with an actually good bill?"
Chakrabarti wasn't the only one to find fault in Pelosi's quotes, with Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib tweeting about the article, too.
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