House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are set to meet Friday, a spokesperson for Pelosi confirmed to The Post.
The sit down was originally expected to happen Thursday. The date change was first reported by ABC News.
A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez told The Post “no comment.”
The meeting is supposed to be a next step in bringing together a sometimes-fractured Democratic caucus, with the social media savvy “Squad” splitting from Pelosi on recent votes.
Ocasio-Cortez was also offended when Pelosi diminished the four freshman lawmakers by saying in an interview that they “didn’t have any following” outside the Twitter world.
“They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got,” Pelosi said of their pull on Capitol Hill.
Ocasio-Cortez tweeted a response to Pelosi’s comments in early July.
“That public ‘whatever’ is called public sentiment. And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
The heat, however, has been turned down since then.
The groundwork for the meeting was laid last Thursday, after a diverse set of Democratic leaders — that consisted of Caucus Chairman Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), New Democrat Coalition Chair Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash) and Blue Dog Coalition Chair Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) — sent out a statement of solidarity that was described by one source as “collective de-escalation.”
As part of it, the House Democratic Caucus deleted a tweet that was critical of Ocasio-Cortez’s Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti. “Who is this guy and why is he explicitly singling out a Native American woman of color?” a tweet from @HouseDemocrats asked.
Chakrabarti had suggested that Rep. Sharice Davids, a Democrat from a formerly red Kansas district, voted in a way that helped “enable a racist system.” He, in kind, did the same.
However tweets critical of Pelosi remain on Chakrabarti’s Twitter account, including one from early July that reads, “All these articles want to claim what a legislative mastermind Pelosi is, but I’m seeing more strategic smarts from freshman members like [Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. Pelosi is just made that she got outmaneuvered (again) by Republicans.”
Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi also haven’t seen eye to eye on impeachment. After Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s first round of testimony Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez told The Post that she thought Mueller “certainly” advanced the case for impeaching President Trump.
“He indicated that the president could be liable for crimes after leaving office,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
But at an early evening press conference, Pelosi said no impeachment action was imminent.
“I don’t know why they thought that,” Pelosi said.
Instead she said Democrats were waiting for more court decisions to come down before making any official moves toward opening an impeachment inquiry.
Credit: Source link
The post AOC, Nancy Pelosi set meeting amid Democratic spat appeared first on Fox USA Live.
from WordPress https://ift.tt/2JQiXDs
Comments
Post a Comment
Thank