AOC explains the AOC-Trump voter — The ReidOut Full Interview

[0:01] Of all the confounding results in this past election, perhaps the strangest phenomenon [0:06] was the surprising number of people who voted for Democrats down ballot and then checked off [0:11] Donald Trump for president. That was the case in New York's 14th district. A number of voters [0:15] cast their ballot for both Trump and one of the House's most progressive Democrats, [0:20] Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, better known as AOC. And while the Democratic Party [0:26] is still reeling from the results, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is doing something a lot of the [0:31] D.C. folks aren't doing, which is talking to social media and actually talking to voters [0:35] to figure out why this happened. If you voted for Donald Trump and me, or if you voted for Donald [0:45] Trump and voted Democratic down ballot, I would really love to hear from you. This is not a place [0:54] of judgment. I'm not going to put your stuff on blast or anything like that or dunk on it. That's [1:00] genuinely not the intent here. I actually want to learn from you. I want to hear what you were [1:06] thinking. And I just want to hear from you. Joining me now is the aforementioned Democratic [1:13] Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. OK, AOC, what they say? I mean, there's a lot of [1:20] different things that we saw. I think there's a lot of people. First of all, it's important to note that [1:26] Democrats, oftentimes when we lose elections, we think that we lost people to Trump. And that [1:32] is true in circumstances. But they don't look enough that at the fact that we also lost people [1:39] to the couch. We have two people that we're running against. So a lot of people say this is why I voted [1:47] for you and Trump. And some people say this is why I didn't vote or didn't vote top of the ticket. [1:52] Right. Skip the top of the ticket, which, by the way, there's been a lot of paranoia about the fact [1:56] that Democrats were able to win statewide in some places while Kamala Harris lost. And I keep trying [2:01] to tell people there are voters who go in and either just vote the top Trump voters who will say, [2:06] I just want Trump, don't care about Republicans and the reverse who say, I'm not voting top of the [2:10] ticket, but I'll vote everybody else. Right. Right. And we I think we saw some of that happen as well. [2:16] But when it comes to people who split their ticket, I think a lot of people cited several different [2:22] things. One is there is universal frustration in this country. Much of it, I actually think justified [2:30] that is raging at a political establishment that centers corporate interests, billionaires and puts [2:40] their needs ahead of the needs of working Americans. And we know that we can either channel [2:50] this righteous rage because there are people whose snap was cut off, their child tax credits were cut [2:57] off, but they're seeing people like Elon Musk getting tax breaks and kissing up to Donald Trump [3:03] in order to do so. But they vote for them. Why vote for Elon Musk and Donald Trump? [3:07] And I think that, of course, is the question. It makes no sense. And I think part of it has to do [3:14] with the fact that and I think we're still in a process of going through the data. It's important [3:20] to say that. Yes. And I actually think that it's important to say that the people who are rushing [3:24] to to say, let me give you my grand theory of what's going on right now. The problem is you went [3:29] too woke. Sorry, Kamala Harris was running with Liz Cheney at her side. She wasn't going, quote unquote, [3:35] woke. If we had an election on November 5th and November 6th, you've got an answer. Right. [3:40] Don't listen to those people. I agreed. Do not listen to those people. So I want to have the [3:46] I want to say that we shall have the humility of saying this is an ongoing learning process. However, [3:51] there is something to be said about it doesn't matter that he's lying. He's saying that I'm fighting [4:00] for you in all of this debate that people are talking about with this woke thing. Right. [4:06] Oh, my gosh. It's because we care about trans people. And that's why only Donald Trump cared [4:12] about trans people. He was the one running under 30 million dollars worth of ads. The [4:16] Harris campaign said nothing about this issue. That's right. That's right. And listen, [4:20] the ads, it's not to even deny the fact that these ads were effective in certain areas. [4:24] What I think people are paying too much attention to is the first half of that ad, [4:28] which says Kamala Harris is or that said Kamala Harris is for they them. Everyone's focusing on [4:36] that. They're not focusing on the second half of that ad where he said Donald Trump is for you. [4:44] Yeah. Yeah. And Democrats very often in their messaging, they speak. And in this in terms and [4:53] in concepts and not in the second person, I care about you. And political races are not about one [5:03] candidate versus another candidate. Too often it gets pigeonholed like that. It is a race to convince [5:10] a person about who cares about you more. Let me ask you this question, because we've been talking a lot [5:15] about RFK Jr. My mind is a bit blown. I mean, I mean, we knew that Donald Trump would go good would [5:20] go wild. There's no constraints on him. He could just he could just put all his friends in. But [5:24] we're talking about RFK Jr. and the possibility of people pulling back on measles vaccines on [5:30] another pandemic happening. You're talking about Matt Gaetz. There's a 17 year old girl out there [5:34] terrified that all of her records, all of the witnesses against him in this case where she was [5:39] trafficked could be in the hands of Matt Gaetz and he could be the most powerful law enforcement [5:44] official in the country in a case where the president of the United States is an adjudicated [5:48] sexual abuser. If you're a sexual assault survivor, you're thinking, oh, my God, this country is out [5:52] to get me. They're out to get me and force me to have children by sexual assault. So the message to [5:58] women has been insane. OK, and the people he's nominating are TV hosts, et cetera. Do you think the [6:04] people who voted for him that you've talked to were expecting this? No, no. Or true mass deportation? [6:12] Genuinely. Genuinely. Yeah. No. And it's heartbreaking. Actually, it is. It is heartbreaking. [6:20] And people may want to take like a kind of vengeful stance about this, but it is genuinely [6:27] heartbreaking. People need to understand that there are people, millions of people in this country, [6:35] and I was one of them, where you are working two, three shifts a day to try to make ends meet. [6:42] You're not reading the newspaper every morning with a cup of coffee. Yeah, you're not. And it's not to [6:48] say that people are uneducated or uninformed or anything like that, but like this is real life. [6:52] This is real life. You've got a baby on your hip and you've got two, three shifts to work in that [6:56] day and you're just trying to make things work. And you have such an overwhelm of information. [7:00] And I actually think something that is different about this moment than I saw, whether it was 2020 or [7:07] 20 after 2016, is that almost like right the day after people immediately said, were coming to me and [7:16] saying, he's not actually going to do that. Right. And it's important to say people, people may often say [7:22] he said he was going to do this. It was right here on the campaign trail. If you actually listen to him, [7:26] if you listen to Donald Trump's acceptance speech, when he talked about immigration, [7:32] he talked about legal pathways first. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't say he was going to do. He didn't lead [7:37] with mass deportations. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to hold you. We're going to hold you over [7:40] if you don't mind. We're going to hold for one more. We're going to take a quick break, pay for all of [7:43] this. And then when we come back, AOC will still be right here with me. Stay right there. [7:48] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is back with me. We were talking a little bit about the, [7:52] the shock that people are feeling about not really thinking Donald Trump was going to do [7:57] the things he was doing. Let's talk about mass deportation. Do you think the 55% of Latino men, [8:02] the 40 some odd percent of Latinas thought he was really going to do it? [8:06] No, I think what is interesting, kind of what, what we were discussing earlier is that [8:13] one of the things that I learned when I was asking about people who voted for Donald Trump and me, [8:19] I asked them, where do you get your news from? How do you like take in information? Right. And one [8:27] of the things that they said is that one of their primary trusted sources of information was they [8:33] said you as in me. Yeah. That means that they rely on me as their elected official for information [8:40] directly. It also means that they are listening to him directly for his information. And as we said [8:47] earlier, he, in Donald Trump's victory speech, he said that when he talked about immigration, [8:55] the first thing that he talked about was legal pathways. He talked about mass deportation [9:00] afterwards. And so I think people who believe what he says, when he says we're only going after [9:06] criminals, they think that he's going after somebody else. Meanwhile, the Republican Party, [9:14] the Trump campaign, people like Stephen Miller. Yeah. They believe that being undocumented means [9:21] you are a criminal. Right. Right. And they don't understand that. I want to talk about a couple of [9:26] the picks that, you know, as you said, people may not have saw coming. Matt Gaetz, you've had to deal [9:31] with him as a member of Congress. How concerned are you about him being attorney general? You know, [9:36] I think right now the mood on the Hill, you know, there's a lot of Republican uproar about it. [9:41] I find it interesting, too. It's important to note that Matt Gaetz won general election to the 119th [9:49] Congress. So he resigned his seat. That he just won. Just for to finish this term. Yeah. The seat [9:57] that he just won starts in January. Right. So he may just be away from Congress for two months. Yeah. [10:04] Potentially just to expunge this ethics report. Do you think it'll come out, the ethics report? [10:10] Well, I think there's a large jurisdiction. I don't know if the ethics committee has a legal [10:15] grounds now to release it. Yeah. I do wonder if the Senate would subpoena it in order to understand [10:21] and make a full have a fully informed decision. Yeah. Similar to, I think, when you had Justice [10:29] Kavanaugh with credible sexual assault allegations and there was an FBI report and that whole investigation [10:36] is something else, you know, a different matter. But the Senate, it was still relevant to a Senate [10:41] confirmation hearing. And so I think that's an open question as to whether the Senate would [10:48] subpoena it. I wonder if the Democratic Senate majority now would be able to do that as well. [10:56] I don't know. These are open legal questions. And people would have to not fear that then he would [11:02] be confirmed and then go after them. Let's talk about RFK Jr. And we were talking a little bit [11:07] in the break. Let's bring that forward to TV. Some of the concerns you have about what he might do to [11:11] HHS. Yeah. I think it's what's very important, too, is that, yes, there are these concerns about [11:16] that. You have a baby and anywhere in the world, I mean, protecting against polio, against measles, [11:24] against very serious communicable diseases that, I mean, we would be talking about going back to the, [11:30] what, 1,700, 1,800. I mean, this is serious. But on top of that, if you're a Republican that voted [11:39] for Donald Trump, you believe in his agenda. Yeah. Something that is broadly popular among [11:46] Republicans and Democrats are community health centers. If you live in a rural area and there's [11:53] not a hospital very close to you, but there is a community center closer to you, it could be decimated [11:58] under Robert F. Kennedy. And we're talking about people who live in rural communities. We're [12:04] talking about people who live in underserved communities that have been neglected. In order [12:07] to, whether it's to get a shot or just to get checked up on, we're talking about the potential [12:13] decimation of community health centers. And we haven't even gotten to Tulsi Gabbard potentially [12:18] having access to national security information. And Russia loves it, loves her. [12:22] And I actually think almost more than Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard's appointment is devastating. And [12:33] Tulsi Gabbard's nomination, as much as she says that she's an anti-war person, she's not. [12:41] Yeah. [12:41] She supports very pro-war individuals. [12:46] Including in Syria. [12:47] And let's be very clear, a Tulsi Gabbard nomination is a pro-war nomination globally. Point blank period. [12:55] As is Donald Trump as president of the United States. Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, [13:01] thank you so much. [13:01] Of course, thank you. [13:02] Much appreciated. Thank you.