Key Points
- Squad members campaign on wealth equality and defunding police.
- However, once elected, they don’t exactly practice what they preach.
- The optics on fancy dinners and private security details are not great.
If squad members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Cori Bush are for wealth equality and defunding the police, they have a very strange way of showing it. Squad hypocrisy is reaching an all-time high; the pinnacle, perhaps, is AOC at the Met Gala.
Last night, Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attended one of the most elitist events of the year. Met Gala tickets are $35,000 a head. Tables can go as high as $200,000. She claims she went for free and her much-discussed ‘Tax the Rich’ dress was borrowed.
But what is she doing rubbing elbows with everyone she supposedly hates?
“The Met Gala is seen as elite and inaccessible…As a working class woman, [I] wanted to enjoy the event but also break the fourth wall and challenge the industry,” AOC told Vogue.
No matter how the congresswoman tries to spin this, the optics are terrible.
According to the Daily Mail, AOC “who…drives a $35,000 Tesla and claims to be ‘100% grass roots from the Bronx’ despite growing up in a wealthy NYC suburb – wore a borrowed dress from Brooklyn designer Brother Vellies, a celebrity favorite run by Aurora James and had her make-up done beforehand by a Bobbi Brown artist. Her hair was styled by Vogue stylist Eric Williams and her shoes and bag were also from Brother Vellies.”
Sure, being rich is terrible.
AOC is worth more than $1 million dollars and sells $60 sweatshirts on her website that say ‘Tax the Rich.’ (“Pot, this is kettle. Do you read me?”.)
But the hypocrisy doesn’t stop there. Popular squad rally cry “Defund the Police” is also hard to take seriously when every squad member enjoys private security on the taxpayer’s dime.
AOC (D-NY) has spent more than $35,000 on private security outside her burrough; Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) has spent $7,500 on protection so far this year; Cori Bush (D-MO) paid personal security firms $70,000 from her campaign funds; and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) spent a few thousand in 2021 while simultaneously denigrating police departments.
If the squad wants to be taken seriously, they should drop the “do as I say, not as I do” act.
