Kevin McCarthy doesn’t run the Republican caucus anymore — the QAnon members do: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Not one Republican has condemned Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) after she called for the execution of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama and spread conspiracy theories that Sept. 11 was an "inside job" and school shootings were "false flags." Instead, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) put her on the Education Committee in the House. Democrats are taking another route.
Speaking to MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Wednesday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said that it has become clear that McCarthy is not in control of the GOP caucus, the Republican Party belongs to QAnon now.
"I actually sense a profound difference between the Republican caucus of last term, the 115th Congress, and the Republican caucus of this term," she confessed. "That difference was that it really felt that last term the Republican caucus was one of extreme fidelity to Donald Trump. There were some that were true believers. Others simply remained quiet out of cowardice and out of fear of the president's retribution. But this term there are legitimate white supremacist sympathizers that sit at the heart and at the core of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives."
She said that McCarthy doesn't respond to the white supremacist vitriol coming from his own members, despite expelling former Rep. Steve King (R-IA) several years ago.
"It increasingly seems, unfortunately, that in the House Republican caucus, Kevin McCarthy answers to these QAnon members of congress, not the other way around," she went on. "And that is something that frankly needs to be said -- he said he was going to pull representative Marjorie Taylor Greene aside after, you know, her comments to Parkland activists and comments saying that Muslim Americans should not fully and freely serve in the House, that they must be forced to swear on a Bible, et cetera. But I've seen Kevin McCarthy pull someone aside before for a talking to. And that representative that I saw him do that to was Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida. And what Kevin McCarthy did was that he pulled him aside to essentially excuse his behavior, to allow it, and to abet it."
She went on to say that McCarthy's inability to hold his caucus accountable is a major reason why she went to the floor to call out Yoho herself. So, when she hears that McCarthy is going to give someone a "talking-to," she assumes it's a mere formality.
"What is he going to tell them? Keep it up?" Ocasio-Cortez asked. "Because there are no consequence in the Republican caucus for violence. There's no consequence for racism. No consequence for misogyny. No consequence for insurrection. And no consequence means that they condone it. It means that that silence is acceptance, and they want it because they know that it is a core animating political energy for them. And this is extremely dangerous -- an extremely dangerous threshold we have crossed because we are now away from acting out of fidelity to their president that they had in the Oval Office, and now we are talking about fidelity to white supremacist organizations as a political tool."
Now, she said, it's clear the Republicans are unwilling to hold those members accountable or distance themselves from it.
See a clip below:
AOC www.youtube.com
