Fact-challenged Andrea Mitchell is under fire for missing the obvious about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the other progressive congresswomen of “The Squad.”
The MSNBC anchor struggled to accept Republicans, including President Trump during his campaign rally this week, calling the women “socialists,” denying it was so during a panel discussion on “Andrea Mitchell Reports” Thursday.
(Video: MSNBC)
Mitchell attempted to fact-check Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy after a news conference in which he defended the president’s remarks during the rally, saying he was waging “a battle over a socialist issue and the socialist Democrats, that’s one that he’s taken up even in the State of the Union, he promised that this country will never have socialism here.”
Mitchell referred to a tweet from Merriam-Webster listing socialism among their top searches as her jumping-off point to declare that none of the group of Democrats Trump named – Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – are “socialists.”
?Tonight’s top searches, in order: racism, socialism, fascism, concentration camp, xenophobia, bigot
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) July 18, 2019
“The President did call out these congresswomen by name,” she said, referring to Trump’s rally in Greenville, N.C. on Wednesday.
“Now first of all, none of these members of Congress are socialists, but that is the way the Republican leadership wants to frame this election face-off,” she declared.
“They don’t have a Democrat to run against, they’re not running against Bernie Sanders per se yet,” Mitchell argued. “There’s not a single member of these congressional representatives who are avowed socialists, so I don’t know where that is coming from other than opposition research.”
Andrea Mitchell just said on MSNBC that none of the squad are socialists and that she doesn’t “know where that is coming from,” that it’s a “Republican talking point.” Never mind that AOC said capitalism is irredeemable and that socialism is the answer.
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) July 18, 2019
Mediaite columnist Caleb Howe noted that apparently “opposition research is more comprehensive than MSNBC’s” as Mitchell seemed to have “missed a big fact.”
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an outspoken member of the group Democratic Socialists of America, the ‘largest socialist organization in the United States’ according to their own description, a fact which has been in no way mysterious and was featured in profiles on the Congresswoman by everyone from the Daily Beast to the New York Times,” Howe wrote in an op-ed. “She also self-identifies as a ‘Democratic Socialist,’ and argues the concepts on Twitter.”
But Ocasio-Cortez has occasionally struggled to explain the differences between socialism and the Democratic Socialism she espouses.
“First of all, there’s a huge difference between socialism and Democratic socialism,” she said on “The View” last year. “Democratic socialism, and really what that boils down to me, is the basic belief that I believe that in a moral and wealthy America and a moral and modern America, no person should be too poor to live in this country.”
In an interview with Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson in 2018, the then-New York Democratic candidate said she did not “give a damn” if people called her a socialist.
“I believe in health care for all, I believe in education for all, I believe in housing as a human right, and then if people are going to call me a socialist for believing in those things, alright, call me a socialist; I don’t give a damn,” she said.
Meanwhile, Mitchell – who assumed the descriptions of the congresswomen were not true because Trump and other Republicans had said so – had an equally ridiculous take on Omar.
“Whatever her views may have been, or are, about Israel, that doesn’t define her and has nothing to do with the attacks against her,” she said to a panel that drank up every word without pushback.
“Someone who describes herself as a ‘democratic socialist’ is a socialist. The end,” NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck told Fox News. “And even if Ocasio-Cortez didn’t describe herself that way, one look at her policies and they fit the description.”
Plenty of other criticism was leveled at Mitchell for her clueless stance on the women’s views.
Andrea Mitchell, propagandist https://t.co/wv4a4nYjer
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) July 19, 2019
Never mind the fact that AOC (and the others) are card-carrying members of the DSA, which is, you know, a socialist organization. Mitchell doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) July 18, 2019
Kind of scary that Andrea Mitchell doesn’t recognize socialism when she sees it. Even scarier is that people will believe her because they think she knows what she’s talking about.
— Gail Goodwin (@GailGoodwin2) July 19, 2019
Has @mitchellreports been on the same planet as the rest of us??!! My Gosh!!! They are proud of it, lady!! To think…she calls herself a journalist. #SMH
— J.P. ?? ?? (@1967oldman) July 19, 2019
In her defense, it is hard to you know what other people are saying when you live inside of a tin can made up solely of your own news network’s programming.
— Rising serpent (@rising_serpent) July 18, 2019
And…this from Andrea Mitchell’s own network:
Democratic Socialists of America scored wins in the midterms. What’s on their agenda? https://t.co/qfLLNHevk4 via @nbcnews
— Mrs Malindo (@Mrs_Malindo) July 19, 2019
Well, if Andrea Mitchell says it…
— IPOT (@IPOT1776) July 19, 2019
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.
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