Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., lashed out at White House aide Kellyanne Conway after Conway accused her of being silent about the Sri Lanka “massacre of Christians.”
CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer initially tweeted that Conway said Ocasio-Cortez didn’t tweet anything about Saturday’s synagogue shooting, prompting Conway to correct the record and say that she was slamming the freshman congresswoman for her “silence about the Sri Lanka massacre of Christians (not Easter Worshippers” as Obama and Hillary oddly said). Try listening before spewing.”
Zelizer has since deleted his original tweet.
“I see officials who get a lot of airtime and ink, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, congresswoman, who tweets many times about the mosque but never once about Sri Lanka,” said Conway appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
“Hello Ms. Conway, On Easter I was away from tech visiting my grandmother in Puerto Rico, which continues to suffer from the White House’s incompetent disaster response,” responded Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter. “Are you trying to imply that I am less Christian? What was the point of you bringing this up on national TV?”
“I chose to use the word ‘incompetent’ when it comes to Trump’s response to Hurricane María & the 3,000 Americans who died on his watch, but that’s only because I had 280 characters,” she continued. “There are plenty of other words too: Negligent, Inept, Inhumane, Predatory. Take your pick.”
“Corrupt’ is a good one, too,” she added. “I’m curious, how do you spin ignoring and neglecting the largest mass death of people on American soil in decades, @KellyannePolls? After all, the official count of 3,075 people is much bigger than the 64 number your admin clung to for so long.”
Ocasio-Cortez called the series of bombings in Sri Lanka, which death toll has risen to 290, “horrifying.”
“Saying ‘Easter worshippers’ matters bc Easter is the holiest day of the year for Christians, & to be targeted on Easter highlights how heinous the attack was – just as saying yesterday’s #SanDiego shooting was on Passover,” she tweeted.
“You are using this as an excuse to stoke suspicion around my Christianity + faith life, @KellyannePolls,” Ocasio-Cortex added. “The Sri Lanka massacre was horrifying. No one should be targeted for their religion. If you’re so moved, let’s do more to welcome immigrants fleeing religious persecution.
Conway was defending President Trump’s response to the summer of 2017 white nationalist rally that turned violent in Charlottesville, Va., and his stance on hate crimes when she brought up Ocasio-Cortez.
“Whether they are Muslims in the mosque in New Zealand, whether they’re the worshipers in Charleston, South Carolina, at the AME church several years ago, whether you’re in Sutherland Springs at a Christian service, whether you’re our friends at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and now in California — we condemn it, and I’m glad that the president, as the leader of this country, is out there condemning, unequivocally, hate crimes,” she said.
“He called it a hate crime, I think before the officials had in California. And we have to speak out about it; we have to be honest about it, and we have to condemn hate in all of its forms.”
“Was his response perfect?” asked “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper.
“That is darn-near perfection,” said Conway, “when you’re calling out KKK, neo-Nazis and you’re saying there were people there who hadn’t signed up for that. I think anytime a president is willing to condemn people who hate other people based on their race or their religion, it’s a great day for America and that’s what he did and he did it several times.”
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