Chris Wallace Grills AOC About Dunking On Elon Musk and ‘Creepy Weirdo’ Republicans: ‘Why Make It So Personal?’

CNN anchor Chris Wallace grilled Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about her social media dunks on people like Elon Musk and “creepy weirdo” Republicans “fixated” on her sex and identity.

The latest interviews from Wallace’s series Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace on HBO Max feature AOC, Barry star and area Fonzie Henry Winkler, and Michelle Zauner of the alternative pop band Japanese Breakfast.

During his interview with AOC, Wallace asked about a couple of her more pugnacious responses in social media feuds with Elon Musk and “creepy weirdo” Steve Cortes:

CHRIS WALLACE: Let’s talk about social media at last check. You had 13 million followers on Twitter and 8.6 million on Facebook. And I’m curious about how you choose to handle some of the comments you got. I want to put one of them up. Last year, a former Trump campaign operative tweeted this photo of you with your fiancee and said “Her guy,” your now fiancee, “her guy is showing his gross pale male feet in public with hideous sandals.” This was your response. “If Republicans are mad they can’t date me. They can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet. Ya creepy weirdos.” Why did you go that road?

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well, I think that the comment taken in context was part of a long strain of, and a long pattern of behavior, not just online, but, frankly, on television and in conservative media outlets of a fixation of how I look, a fixation on my partner, a fixation and even just a general narrative. The things that they chose to talk about were very much rooted in my identity as a woman and I believe rooted in a great deal of misogyny and underlying, I believe, underlying issues around sex and identity. And a lot of the way that I believe Republican narratives work is in speaking in subtext. And the way that we remove that power is by calling it out explicitly. And I think that also speaks to the overwhelming reaction that Republicans had and Republican media had after I stated that, because I called them out on the way that they long had discussed me as a woman, how they long discussed how I looked, how they long discussed my age, how they long discussed who I am in in my station, in life. It is none of a Republican Party’s business to discuss if I’m single or married or if I’m, you know, what that may be and. They had developed a very long comfort and pattern in going there with me. And I believe that that comfort was there was because I’m young and because I’m a woman and I will call it out. And certainly it is not an Emily Post way of doing that. But I’m also a New Yorker and I can’t deny the way that that I you know, the culture that I was raised.

CHRIS WALLACE: How did it work, calling it out, did it make it any better or did it just fan the flame?

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: I know I believe it did work because I have noticed a significant reduction in that fixation towards me, at least on Fox News. Not, perhaps not online, but I believe it has in other conservative media outlets. It’s been effective.

CHRIS WALLACE: You’re also in a scrap right now with Elon Musk over his plan to charge people $7.99 a month to have their accounts verified. After you say Twitter messed up your account, you posted this.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: So it turns out we had under a certain little billionaire skin. There’s something that is so satisfying about just being here in the Bronx in part Chester, where my dog and we have a billionaire pressed, like pah-ressed! The American Dream baby!

CHRIS WALLACE: So first of all, and you’re a master at messaging, I think you actually made a mistake there because I know a lot of people focused more on the chicken nugget you were eating — couldn’t get past that. But why, again, why make things so personal?

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: I think. We need to make the issues that we discuss real. And the fact of the matter is, is that we are in a point in not just American society, but our global economy, where the concentration of wealth and power has become so focused that it is literally identifiable people, not coalitions, not groups, not and not anything else like that. Not not a company, but one individual that has control over what has largely been deemed an important public square of sorts of democratic discourse. I think it’s important for us to call attention to that, because it’s not just a you know, this isn’t this isn’t just like a flippant message. This is an individual that is responsible and over stewarding a platform that has been a very important realm of political expression, like the Arab Spring, like many of our election discourse and the decisions that are made over that has have brought implications.

Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace drops three full episodes each Friday morning, and CNN airs a version recapping highlights of the episodes every Sunday at 7 p.m.

Watch the full exchange above via HBO Max and CNN.