Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) thinks that the House GOP is being led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) rather than House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
Ocasio-Cortez also said that McCarthy is “choosing to side with the extremists” amid having to balance the narrow Republican majority in the House, while speaking on MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki.
“I think you’ve got Marjorie Taylor Greene running the caucus, and she makes very common public statements to that effect. Every time something irks her, she communicates that McCarthy is doing her bidding, and I think that this is something that is quite clear,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“I think that Speaker McCarthy is stuck between having to please the most racist and heinous elements of this party with having to maintain majority, and he is choosing to side with the extremists,” she added.
The New York Democrat also said she does not believe McCarthy has the votes to get his debt ceiling plan passed in the House, despite assurances from McCarthy he has enough votes.
Greene has been a fierce ally of McCarthy, defending him amid the chaos of the House speaker election in January and closely aligning herself with him in the new Congress. A New York Times report in January alleged that McCarthy has said in private he “will always take care of” Greene because of her loyalty.
Ocasio-Cortez also took aim at another GOP leader in Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), saying he has made “large critical errors” and alleging he has been trying to “out-Trump Trump.”
“His attacks on teachers, on schools, on LGBT Americans, I think go way too far in the state of Florida, and I think that they are profound political miscalculation and an overcompensation. He may be trying to win a base, but that base belongs to Donald Trump, and he has sacrificed I think the one thing that others may have thought would make him competitive, which is this idea that he would be more rational than Donald Trump, which he isn’t,” Ocasio-Cortez said to Psaki.
