‘She Was Terrible! Get Over It!’ CNN NewsNight Panel Brawls Over AOC’s Disaster Answer

CNN’s News Night broke into chaos on Tuesday as panelists brawled over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) lackluster performance at the Munich Security Conference.

The congresswoman’s highly publicized flub was hotly debated by those appearing alongside host Abby Phillip, who pointed out the contradiction in the media’s focus on Ocasio-Cortez’s Munich moment.

“So look, I’ll give you that AOC probably should have been more ready for that question, but are we going to really pretend that the actual president of the United States has not made similar or perhaps worse flubs on the global stage?” she asked the panelists.

Former New York City comptroller candidate John Tabacco pointed out that the congresswoman had only given one poor answer, while President Donald Trump had made many public gaffes, a point podcast host Leigh McGowan reiterated.

“Yeah. Listen, stumbling over your words for 15 seconds is not the same as being incoherent or uneducated on foreign policy,” she said.

CNN’s Ana Navarro began to share her thoughts before a sarcastic comment from Trump ally Kevin O’Leary derailed the discussion.

Read the exchange below.

NAVARO: She’s not a foreign policy expert.

TABACCO: Clearly.

O’LEARY: No, you don’t say. Come on, give her a break.

CARI CHAMPION: You guys, this is exhausting.

NAVARRO: You didn’t even know who was running in Texas, okay? So there’s a ton of things you don’t know Kevin, stop being so condescending.

CHAMPION: For five seconds let somebody finish their thoughts before you have to be rude.

NAVARRO: I would like to see how you would be able to answer that. Look, I think that it takes a lot of courage. And I think for her to be expanding her message, for her to be expanding her areas of policy interest are a good thing. She is one of 435 members of Congress. There’s a lot of them there that don’t come with a breadth of foreign policy.

O’LEARY: You’re right. She was fabulous.

[crosstalk]

O’LEARY: Let me say something here. Let’s say you’re hired to give a speech. Let’s say you’re hired because you’re expected to deliver information to an audience. Let’s say you’re even paid for it. When you go and do that, what happens is the agency that hired you, whether it’s the government, your own party, says that was not your best moment. In fact, they tied you back to [former Vice President] Kamala Harris. You were so bad you sounded like her. And by the way I’m sorry, it’s not a partisan issue. She was terrible. Get over it! Now maybe she’ll get better.

CHAMPION: She was not terrible.

MCGOWAN: She was terrible for twenty seconds.

CHAMPION: Seconds, that was it. And the reality –

O’LEARY: Are you kidding?

[crosstalk]

O’LEARY: Call it what it is.

CHAMPION: No, but the reality is if you take just a minute and not be condescending, I really believe what she was –

O’LEARY: I’m not condescending. I’m trying to help her. Lift her up. Make her better.

CHAMPION: One moment. You had your moment. You had your moment.

PHILLIP: Let her respond.

CHAMPION: The reality is Kevin, is that she was taking a beat, and yes, she wasn’t great for less than 20 seconds, if you ask me, but I thought she was doing something that the President of the United States rarely does and that’s think before she speaks.

O’LEARY: I don’t recall him stumbling for thirty-eight seconds.

CHAMPION: She was trying to get her words together, so she knew how to handle it appropriately.

O’LEARY: It’s not partisan.

CHAMPION: And if people did that, we wouldn’t be in this situation.

Watch above via NewsNight.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!