Ocasio-Cortez, at SXSW, blasts FDR, Reagan and capitalism
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D, N.Y., at SXSW blasted FDR, Ronald Reagan and capitalism.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing another fact-check, this time for claiming President Trump did not transfer any money to address the country’s opioid crisis.
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“Amount President Trump has transferred from other agencies to fund his ‘Build the Wall’ Emergency: $10s of millions, & has identified billions more. Amount he’s transferred to address the Opioid National Emergency: $0,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Friday night.
The tweet included a previous CSPAN post of a five-minute clip taken as the New York Democrat was questioning James W. Carroll, the White House director of drug policy. The tweet included the caption: “@AOC compares #OpioidCrisis to #SouthernBorder: ‘So, we've got two emergencies, one is treated with an actual action and the other is just to raise awareness.’”
The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler dished out a “three Pinocchio” rating, which the Post assigns for comments containing a “significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.”
The main point of contention for the Post was Ocasio-Cortez trying to connect the two scenarios.
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“Ocasio-Cortez is making a highly misleading comparison,” Kessler wrote, before adding: “the situations are not comparable.”
While Congress refused Trump $6 billion for a wall, Kessler noted, "Congress acted to give the administration more than $6 billion for the opioid crisis, so there was little need for him to transfer funds without congressional authorization."
He concluded: “Trump has no need to transfer billions of dollars for the opioid emergency because Congress already has appropriated billions of dollars. Trump’s backing of a national public-health emergency did more than raise awareness; it triggered a congressional response. So it’s the exact opposite of the standoff over the wall.
“One can question the effectiveness of the Trump response to the opioid epidemic without resorting to red herrings and false equivalency.”
Tuesday’s rebuke from the Post is not the first time the newspaper has taken issue with one of Ocasio-Cortez’s claims.
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In January, Kessler defended his decision to give the Democrat another "three-Pinocchio" rating after she criticized the move.
Ocasio-Cortez claimed the Post columnist relied on a "Walmart-funded" study when he analyzed her statements that the vast majority of the country doesn't earn the minimum wage.
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"If the point of fact-checking is to enforce some objective standard, why would @GlennKesslerWP use a Walmart-funded think tank as reference material for wage fairness? That’s like citing the foxes to fact-check the hens. Here’s 4 Geppettos for your contested Pinocchios," she wrote.
In his response, Kessler tweeted a screenshot of an addition to his story that said Jason Furman – the author of the study – previously served as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under former President Barack Obama, before telling his followers "don't always believe what you see on Twitter."
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