Rep. AOC Joins the Majority Report

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: We are back and I am so happy to be joined now by President, I'm sorry, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I mean, honestly, I kind of was 50-50 on it and just went with it. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm doing well. It's great to see you. And I know you're obviously not going to be talking about your ambitions for higher office, so I'm making a little bit of a joke, but have you been surprised to see, you know, how excited people are when there's these polling numbers showing this buzz, as they say, about you and your [00:00:35] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: candidacy? Yeah, I do. I am surprised by it. You know, I think sometimes people would talk about it and I was always candidly like, yeah, OK, whatever. But then some of these polls came out and I'm like, what is happening? I was in Memphis and Justin Pearson, you know, we were campaigning for him and there were some folks actually had driven out from Arkansas and they were talking about like the straw polls out there. And I'm like, I don't, you know, but I think people are pissed off. [00:01:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, right. People are pissed off. And I want to talk about what people are pissed about as well, specifically the data centers. I mean, you mentioned Memphis and your trip down to the south. You went to Georgia as well. You know, I was kind of going back and looking at stuff from 2018, eight years ago when you just won your primary. And like, you know, one of the through lines in your career has been environmental policy because there's this trajectory from the Green New Deal that you supported early on to now your bill that is a bicameral bill with Senator Sanders about this data center moratorium. How do you envision the future of climate policy? And over the past eight years, has anything changed in what you've seen that has altered [00:01:57] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: your perspective at all? Yeah, you know, I think about that time too. And a lot of our environmental work, I think, has also been reflective of the broader populist work that we've been doing. There are different ways that people enter a climate and environmental fight. Some of it is for from a more scientific perspective. They're seeing the numbers and the data on climate change and trying to keep below, well, you know, eight years ago, trying to keep below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Now we're in much, a much more grave condition than that. And so there are people that are brought to it from a global climate change carbon-based perspective. And really what made a Green New Deal bill, a Green New Deal bill was three things. One, an aggressive decarbonization target, ideally within 10 years. Two, an economically populist platform that meant that any Green New Deal style bill had to create thousands or millions of union track jobs. And the third was an environmental justice and racial and economic component, which is acknowledgement that the communities that are going to be hardest hit are sacrifice zones. And so we need to approach legislation that prioritizes the protection of the communities that are going to be hardest hit by the climate crisis. [00:03:27] Speaker 1: Yeah. And do you think that when it's been hitting people's pocketbooks and their electricity bills in the way that it has, that it's changed the conversation? Now people understand that climate policy [00:03:37] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: policy is very much economic policy as well. I think so. I think so. As we started that effort, because I represent the Bronx, you know, I represent a district that the, and the year I got elected before redistricting, you know, I, I, the majority of my district was in Queens and the minority was in the Bronx. I'm from the Bronx. Now the majority of my district's from the Bronx and the minority of it is in Queens. And what, one of the things that I did early on is that in the Bronx, it's a less ideological place in terms of our electorate. It's obviously very deep blue, but it is very working class and also racially diverse and like all of these things stacked on one another. And so one of the things that we had to do was really deep canvas the community to talk about climate issues in a way that actually show up in our life. So I think to answer your question, it's less about connecting climate to these issues. And it's more about talking about the specific ways that this is an environmental issue in a way that's not tree hugging and academic and out of touch. So eight years ago, it was me doing teach ins in public housing, saying the lead in our water, the sky high asthma rates that we deal with, that is environmental. And this is directly contributed to with the gas infrastructure that we have in our public housing that is leeching into our air and all of the other environmental issues that are going on. And so with the data center fight, I think that this is, it's, it's the similar analog. People are seeing how all of this is wrecking their health, wrecking their communities, and it makes environmental issues, not academic, but very real in people's everyday lives. [00:05:40] Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a poll from data for progress that showed that 63% of voters support pausing construction of AI data centers. So your bill is very much a popularist bill, if you will. But I mean, what's also I think you can connect it to is the Iran war, and how gas prices have been impacted by that, too. So there's a way to I think, as we we've talked about framing Gaza around, as Abdul al-Sayed has done very well, and you just recently endorsed him framing God, like, we shouldn't be spending this amount of money, we should be investing it in our communities. That's also how you can connect that foreign policy issue to environmental racism and environmental investment in this country. [00:06:27] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's about talking about these issues in many different ways that are majoritarian. And there are ways that we can frame these debates that talk about why we come to these conclusions from a moral perspective. I think we always have to be making three arguments at the same time for any issue. A moral argument, an economic argument, and also a political argument. And when we're able to argue for something in a chorus of all of those three, then we're able to build a majoritarian coalition to actually win on them. [00:07:06] Speaker 1: Building a majoritarian coalition is important. And I know that you, I'm sure, share some of my frustration with efforts that felt like they were narrowing the Democratic coalition, the focus on affluent suburbanites over a more working class coalition. But something that I don't think gets talked enough about is where Democrats lost credibility was on the issue of democracy. And when you say majoritarian bills and things like that, that's a way to demonstrate some sort of democratic responsiveness. But on the genocide in Gaza, many Democrats still aren't listening to their voters, although it's a big, a lot of progress in the House with 103 Democrats that voted to block that $3 billion shipment. But Gaza, Biden running again, when a lot of people wanted a more open primary process, like these are choices by the Democrats that box out the voters and make them feel unheard. And so when Kamala Harris was going around and talking about democracy with a banner behind her, they didn't have the credibility that they needed to fight this fascist threat. And I'm curious what you think about that and how the party can be more responsive and demonstrate through action democracy. [00:08:20] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Yeah, I mean, I think about all, you know, you brought up a lot of different points. One is, you know, on this Biden issue. It was interesting watching it happen in real time. You know, what I find very interesting about that moment and the people who talk about that time is that I think that some, not all, but some of the Democrats that are most aggressive about getting their narrative out about how they wanted to push Biden out were also the same Democrats that were most aggressive about closing the wagons on a primary process when we had a chance to have that in a presidential election. Right. And so I feel like a lot of them are compensating because and you hear sometimes there's these like consultant class and like some of these folks that want, you know, who backed Biden when it was time to step down as like some sort of litmus test. But those folks were part of the establishment that were closing the ranks around Biden when before a primary process would have even started. [00:09:41] Speaker 1: So you're saying these people just wanted to be the decider to use a Bushism. [00:09:46] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Well, I think it's not just to be a decider, but they saw at the end how unpopular their actions, you know, the conclusion that their actions had led to and how unpopular it was. So then it became a race to distance themselves from it. So if you run the tape back, right, like there was a moment when the press was asking, do you think Biden should have a primary challenger? And there were some Democrats, many, if not most at the time that were saying, no, I support him, etc. And there were some that were open. Like I was pretty, I mean, I will never because of the way I got here. I can't. You defeated an incumbent. Yeah, I defeated an incumbent. So I just feel on principle, I'm never going to say we shouldn't have a primary. But a lot of the Democrats who said, no, we're sticking with him at that time, were the same that I think oftentimes are very loud about that litmus test after the fact. So but I do agree with you. I think that voters and the electorate, I think what, you know, there's this tension, especially at that time between what the establishment thought defeat could defeat Donald Trump and the mood that the electorate was actually in. And I think when we fast forward to today, the reckoning that we're seeing in some of these primaries, you know, is that what is different between Trump one and Trump two is that I think your median Democratic voter desperately wants to do everything to get Trump out of power and get Republicans out of power. And in Trump one, they trusted the establishment to do that. Yeah. And in Trump two, they do not. And we are seeing how that is playing out in real time. [00:11:38] Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I mean, Bernie endorsements, he's batting what over 50% at this point. And he doesn't seem to give a crap when anyone has to say about it. He's lost patience with some of that. But yeah, I mean, I think then putting aside Biden for a second, just something like the data center moratorium is, as you say, a majoritarian bill. It's responsive to the mood. And I wonder on the inside if you can shed light on why so many of your colleagues are resistant to that. There's almost like a kind of distaste for the messiness of populism that should be anathema to the Democratic Party right now, in my view, because we're fighting a real threat, this fascist in office. I mean, the answer is obvious, it's money. Yes. I was lobbing that up. Yeah. In the past couple [00:12:32] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: cycles, when you just I mean, rightfully, there's a ton of concentration on APAC spending. And also, if you look at the top three spenders, it's APAC, AI, crypto, right? AI being the largest singular source of campaign financing, not just to people like Donald Trump, in many cases, but oftentimes in many House and Senate political campaigns. These folks know, you know, and we look, you know, you go back to 2012, you go back to any other kind of cycle, like when we throw back to the Great Recession. And during that time, it was Wall Street, it was financial firms. Now it's AI that are kind of the top contributors to our political system. And they know that the game is that you need to bankroll both political parties in order to get your agenda passed. And so the good news is that in the moratorium, the people I do think that the revolt that is happening in these communities is very palpable and powerful and powerful. And it is working because the folks that are signing on to the AI moratorium are not just your expected lefty members of Congress. We are seeing Democrats that are more moderate sign on to the moratorium because the outrage among the electorate is also cutting across ideological lines as well. And so I think that there's, despite the fact that there's a lot of resistance and people not signing on to it, there is also increasingly across ideological support for it too. [00:14:20] Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you a little bit about your strategy and how that's evolved because it's safe to say you've become a bit of a fundraising juggernaut. And that gives you this war chest that can help vulnerable Democrats when they need it. And that's valuable for you when you need to ingratiate yourself to members because you've spoken about how you were treated when you got into Congress in 2018. A lot has changed a lot of research since then. And, you know, on our show, we've talked a lot about the importance of building an inside game to pair with outside pressure campaigns. It feels like you've been very conscious and in trying to do that. How conscious has that strategy been for you building power internally? [00:15:00] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I think it's very conscious. My motivation is winning. Same. I love to win. I'm pretty, you know, forthright about that. And I think that you need a lot of different players on the field, right? And when I first got there, you also work with the tools that you have. So when I first got there, I had support from my district, I had the ability to set narrative and be able to communicate. I had we were building kind of digital tools in a time when that was not common in the Democratic Party. And but also didn't have much else. I didn't have internal support. That's putting it mildly. Yeah, it was like a hot. I mean, you were treated with hostility. Yeah, open hostility. And that hostility shows up in ways that you're not even aware of when you get there. There's open hostility. And then there's also secret hostility subterfuge. Yes, yes. And also, you know, we didn't we did not have the fundraising ability at the same. I mean, it was it was robust, but it wasn't the same as it is now. And we were able to do really powerful things and really punch above our weight with what we had. And we were able to then take that and build, build on that. And in New York, part of my immediate focus was not just national, but local. We had to change the city's politics. Because one thing that I don't like to be is alone. Right. And I was very aware that I was surrounded by people who wanted to politically kill me. Andrew Cuomo was governor. You know, a term in Eric Adams was, you know, elected mayor. And so our immediate focus, too, was also how do we support down ballot candidates and cultivate the next generation of people that were going to help govern this country over the next 1015 years. And so that's when we start getting, you know, that year, Julia Salazar got elected in 2018, after my election, because at that time, the primaries were separated. Yep. That was Cynthia Nixon's year to Cynthia Nixon's year, you get Jabari Bristport, you get, you know, and then we start putting these pieces on the board, a term later, Zohra Mamdani, Assemblyman from Astoria, we've got, you know, so on and so forth. We built the the DSA SIO program on the Assembly and Senate level, you have it on the City Council level. And that has also create that then creates the political foundation and strength. So you're not just one person totally surrounded. But you take that and you invest it in a political coalition that can help each other. Yes. And that's not just local, but it's national as well. And you start to learn how to do that. And then you also make a case as to why this is not just good for your worldview, but also why genuinely why this is good for the party. And that I would try to make that argument and it would fall on deaf ears. Yeah. But you don't have to just rely on whether people listen to you or not. You just you just do it. [00:18:49] Speaker 1: Yeah. And you also you have money, right? Like, yeah, I mean, that talks and and that is it's like the I mean, it's a way to combat the deluge of corporate money by having a carrot. And then I mean that I would imagine has made your work life a little bit easier. Has it made it easier for you to get certain agenda items through? I mean, yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things that I [00:19:17] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: think we really encountered when I first got there was that there was there's still it still exists, but there was a really concrete conception in the party that only one kind of candidate can win a swing seat. Right. And it's it was very conservative and it was very cookie cutter. And it didn't matter if your swing seat was in Ohio or Nebraska or Pennsylvania. You had to take certain positions. You had to be a certain kind of candidate in order to be considered viable. And so the kind of crumb that I started with was because at that time we had the largest class since Watergate. So I started to look at all of our frontline candidates and I say, you know, are there any here that kind of break the mold in any way? And at that time we had one, two or three that were on that were, you know, fit whatever mold was fit, but you'd have one that was on Medicare for all. Right. Or you'd have one that was willing to sign on to Green New Deal resolution. And so what I started to do was max out to those front liners that were willing in one way or another to take a risk and buck convention. It wasn't just one or two of those things, but just in general as issues came up. Because I, I think the thing that's most important for us as a left movement to show is, you know, there's a lot of sticks, but we need to have really big carrots and say, if you do this and if you take [00:21:02] Speaker 1: this leap, we will come through for you. If you take a risk, I'm going to support you. And, and, and even if there's some spending against you for this, you'll be able to tap into that as a resource. Like, I mean, these are things that people don't see on the outside that I think are, you know, I'm a political nerd. I love this kind of stuff, but, uh, it's, it's important. And it's part of why you're in the position you are now. And it's also been really, uh, it's been reported that you and Mayor Mondani have worked quite closely, uh, together. And that, that was really clear in the New York endorsements because the mayor endorsed three house candidates, two of whom successfully toppled incumbents, two of whom were DSA. You did not. But what doesn't get talked about is that it also worked the other way with assembly challengers. So you endorse three assembly challengers against incumbents, all of them one, and it's the same situation for Mondani and for you. You have to work with members of the house. Mondani has to work with members of the assembly to get his agenda across and politics is dirty. And so there's a great chance that you're going to be retaliated against either you or Mondani if you miss and the incumbent makes it right. Like that is, I would imagine a part of the strategy and how you guys have been coordinating. Yeah. I also think, I also think [00:22:29] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: there's a larger conversation about the natural limitations that come with any one elected position. Right. And it is really hard to put 100% of every expectation in every situation on one person. And especially when that person is trying to execute on an agenda within the functions of their role. And so sometimes this coordination, it's not just explicit, it's also us functioning within the roles. And if anything, it also demonstrates the advantage of us organizing to support people at multiple levels of governance. Those pressures exist on him as a mayor because he has to coordinate his own budget for the city. The money for the city comes from the state. And his number one focus is being as effective as possible as mayor of New York City. And the same applies to me as a member of the house. And so some of this is also about demonstrating the advantages of what a growing coalition looks like at multiple levels of governance. There are those natural limitations. And also, they create natural complementary strategies and positions. [00:24:00] Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And I guess I'll turn back to the house here, because I'm curious about the if Democrats take back the house, what is your sense of what the most fertile ground is going to be for, you know, oversight of the Trump administration on committees? Because there's just so much to grab at here in terms of corruption and illegality. But I'm curious if you think in terms of like the house business where people think the Trump administration has its most vulnerabilities in terms of oversight. [00:24:37] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: It's a little hard because their law breaking is so prolific. So where my instinct says to go is two things: their source of money and their source of political power. So if I were just to go just off the top of my head in terms of political power, you want to go after Epstein. You want to go after not just corruption generally, but corruption in the ways that undermine their base. I think that after the general election, there was so much, especially the Democratic establishment, so much hay made about like bro podcasts. And that's where they ran up the numbers. Yeah. And I think that the media has just as much of a misogynistic blind spot as anywhere else. I mean, they are the misogynistic blind spot in many ways. You've never experienced that. And so, but the cost of that is that I actually think a lot of it was Maha. I think that there was very little political analysis done on how they really focused on women, on moms, on radicalizing and doing a lot of persuasion in an electorate that was much more swingy than, you know, to be frank, white male voters. Those are generally broken more strongly towards Republicans. But they really focused a lot on women. And they have had probably the biggest betrayals with the glyphosate rulings, with their complete throwing in with big ag and Monsanto and Bayer, including coordinating with the Supreme Court and all of that. And so I think their political vulnerabilities are in, we want to focus on corruption in the ways that undermine their promises. And we want to go after investigations that cut off the supply of their illicit money flows. So. [00:26:58] Speaker 1: What do you, what do you make of the Maha movement then? Because our hypothesis, or at least mine, has been on the show that these charlatans are able to fill a vacuum because there's so much anxiety that people have with the healthcare system. I agree completely. Yeah. If you want to expand on that, go ahead. [00:27:15] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Yeah. I mean, I actually, I actually meet with Maha activists. I, I work with Maha advocates because a lot of them really don't believe that their fight is partisan and in, and it's not in many ways. We do have extraordinary corruption in our agricultural system, in our big corporate system as well, you know, and it, this is an area where both parties in our entire political system has been compromised. Like one of the first things I did was, um, be part when I first got to the house was be part of these congressional investigations on PFAS dumping. Right. Right. And you have companies like 3M and others that, you know, and this goes back decades where you have a big company that is doing manufacturing of some kind and they just dump whatever cancerous byproduct that they have and poison communities around them. And then they just pay off our political class to ignore it and to let it continue to happen or to shield them legally, like with glyphosate, um, from everyday people trying to get that back. And you're right. Also, it's because there's a ton of anxiety around our healthcare system. And I, I don't know. I, I, um, I grew up in a household that was very much shaped by these dynamics. My, so my dad, my dad's side of the family is Catholic and I was raised Catholic, but my mom's side of the family is evangelical. Right. And I see how all of these issues that have been at their surface level expressed as right wing are actually very much just the anxieties that we have as working people not being able to afford healthcare. And so it's also like, how do I stop being sick? How do I prevent being sick by limiting my exposure to things that I think are toxic? Yep. And then, which there are things that are actually toxic and things that aren't actually toxic, um, that get taken advantage of. And then also, when I do get sick and I can't afford medicine, what are the holistic and low cost alternatives that I can turn to because I know that I can't afford to see a doctor. And that is a place of tremendous vulnerability that people feel that is immensely legitimate. And then if you add the racial component too, you know, I'm Puerto Rican, the United States sterilized women for decades. And so you have COVID, you have vaccines, and obviously, in the black community, yeah, same thing. And so that is a perfect storm of a lack of trust in institutions that is oftentimes very valid and very legitimate. And you don't win that by saying, oh, don't worry, or condescending to it, right? We [00:30:24] Speaker 1: do need to fix our healthcare system. Absolutely. Lastly, I know you have to go, I want to make sure that we touched on this because, um, you've been subjected to some pretty interminable misogyny, uh, and, and racism too, throughout your career. Um, including these vile deepfake images on the internet, you and Nancy Mace actually have, have been working together on this Defiance Act. Uh, it's a bill that allows victims who have been, you know, the victims of deepfake, sexual explicit deepfakes, uh, to get recourse. Uh, it passed unanimously in the Senate. It has a bunch of bipartisan co-sponsors, and yet Republicans apparently don't want to pass it because it will give you specifically a win. [00:31:12] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: What's going on there? Um, so I will say that this is not the first time that we've encountered that roadblock, frankly, in both Republican and Democratic majorities. Um, there is a fear about, you know, there is a lot invested in trying to convey an ascendant and popular movement as ineffective. And so there is a lot of incentive by our political establishment to do everything they can to maintain that narrative because it's one of the few things that they have. And I think that in a Republican, uh, majority where they are very vulnerable, the last thing they want, I've, I mean, I've heard straight up, you know, I've had bills that are, you know, we hear about the flashy stuff. I have bills that are so common sense that are, that pass committee unanimously that everyone, Republicans agree on, Democrats agree on, swing seat folks do, uh, agree on, uh, and, you know, having people on my team be told this can't move because it has her name on it. And that has happened in the past, um, under both party leaderships. And that's okay, because we find other ways to be effective. Um, but I do think that when it comes to this issue, I would really implore Speaker Johnson and Republicans, again, this has bipartisan bills. We should not allow pedophiles and sexual abusers to run amok because you just don't like a girl. Hot take, uh, hot take. And I think that there's a lot of political realignment happening in the country and whether, you know, people like it or not, there actually is a lot of hope that can be generated, um, you know, among voters of all kinds to actually show us, get, get something meaningful done by people who are most disparate and unlike one another in the house on something that's real. You know, the defiance act that we're now at a point where something like one in eight middle schoolers, kids know someone or have experienced deep fake attacks in this way. And to allow this to continue to score a political point is some of the most the most egregious and horrible activities that we can do. And I, I actually do think that on this issue, [00:34:10] Speaker 1: it is, they are capable of being better and Mike Johnson's supposed to hate porn. I thought he had some app that he and his son, uh, like notify each other. So like, let's just move it. And I, [00:34:22] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: you know, I won't like, you know, and there's been really great Republican leadership. I've worked with representative Laurel Lee on this, um, and we're ready to rock. Like, let's just, let's help [00:34:36] Speaker 1: people. Right. Let's help people. Right. Well, that's, that's a tall task for Mike Johnson and this Republican leadership. Uh, they also do love protecting pedophiles as well. That's like a core brand proposition for them. So anyway, representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Quick break. We'll be right back.