Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Matt Gaetz Are the Same
I have very little patience for performance art in politics. It’s always an irritating sideshow that distracts from the purpose of government - the running of the country.
Over the last few days, two young Representatives who rose to fame (note, I didn’t say “power”) under Trump have been practicing performance art rather than sound governance.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to a live broadcast over Instagram to talk about how traumatic the events of January 6 were for her. With a violent mob descending on the Capitol building, she recalled hearing loud banging when someone was at her office door. It was a Capitol police officer, but she speculated - without any real pushback whatsoever - that the officer could have been conspiring with the rioters.
Why? Because he came in without a partner. Because he didn’t identify himself as Capitol police earlier. Several reasons that are actually nowhere near the burden of proof necessary to even begin building a case against the unnamed officer.
Nevermind that her timeline of events seems to be a bit off. Nevermind that her office is in the Cannon building, which wasn’t really all that close to the violent mob (there were protestors all over the Capitol complex, but the dangerous stuff was centered on the Capitol building). She wants you to believe she was in the thick of it and that her life was in danger.
When she got pushback from places like RedState, she sent her followers after anyone spreading “disinformation”. She wanted them to report any accounts that questioned her story. She is afraid of pushback and doesn’t like to be challenged. She thinks she is in a position where she can’t be questioned, rather than holding a job that should be questioned at all times.
Becket Adams at the Washington Examiner put it best (you should really read the whole thing because Adams is one of the best at critiquing the media).
The congresswoman has been on a roll recently, lobbing serious allegations of wrongdoing at her usual targets. She even claims Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas “almost” had her “murdered.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, few, if any, in the press have bothered to challenge what are by all objective standards deadly serious and verifiable accusations. Indeed, many journalists seem perfectly content merely to repeat her allegations and leave it at that.
And that's the obvious problem here, that there is basically no pushback against Ocasio-Cortez from the industry that spent the past four years telling us how skilled it is at holding the powerful to account.
She is simply performing, and a willing press is going along with it.
The press is also willing to entertain the performance art of Matt Gaetz, but for a different reason.
Gaetz held a rally, publicly calling for the ouster of Rep. Liz Cheney (daughter of Dick Cheney) from House leadership. She is the chair of the House Republican caucus, and he is a Trump loyalist who is apparently willing to die on the hill that is Trumpism.
He went on TV claiming he had the votes to oust Cheney. He and the other Trump loyalists said they had over 100 votes to remove her from her position. They failed spectacularly. The final count in the secret vote was 145-61-1 (Cheney, I believe, is the one who voted “present”). They weren’t even close.
The press will love this story and give it and Gaetz a lot of airtime because they want to play up the division in the GOP’s ranks over Trump rather than focus on holding people like AOC accountable for their wild claims.
Liz Cheney knows how to play politics because her dad knows how to play politics. That’s a powerful person you’re going up against, and not just because of her position in the House, but because of her aptitude for the game.
If you aim for the Cheneys, you better not miss. Because they don’t*.
Gaetz is someone who has no real accomplishments to his name, other than being loud and once crashing a Democrat-run hearing and ordering pizza. He hasn’t done anything of actual legislative note, and like Ocasio-Cortez, she spends his time being loud and trying to be the face of a movement that, in reality, is in the minority. And, if yesterday’s vote was any indication, that minority is on the decline, not the rise.
It’s almost as though Trump is a fad and Gaetz is going to be the last to know it.
I have no real sympathy for these performance artists, who will eventually leave office before they’re ready and will not be the great revolutionaries they envision themselves being. They won’t even be a footnote. Their theatrics are a distraction, and it’s really time the parties put a stop to both of them at the ballot box.
*Remember that time Dick Cheney shot a guy? That’s was nuts. No one really reacted. It was over pretty quick. Like “Hey, Dick Cheney shot a guy. What a character! Haha!” Except, you know, it was crazy. The dude even apologized to Cheney. That’s how crazy the whole thing was.