AOC Tries to Both-Sides Biden Administration on Child Detention, Backpedals Half an Hour Later

Tommy ChristopherFeb 24th, 2021, 8:53 am
 

LUKE MONTAVON/AFP via Getty Images

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tried to equate President Joe Biden’s reopening of a migrant facility for unaccompanied minors with the Trump administration’s horrific record on child detention — then walked her criticism of Biden back after half an hour of intense reaction.

On Tuesday afternoon, AOC posted a link to a Washington Post article entitled “First migrant facility for children opens under Biden,” and wrote, “This is not okay, never has been okay, never will be okay – no matter the administration or party.”

The article was the same one cited by Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy when he tried to both-sides the issue at Tuesday’s White House briefing. But as Jen Psaki told Doocy, and the article explains, this reopening is nothing at all like the Trump administration’s policy of ripping children away from their families and caging them, and is necessitated by the pandemic.

“This is not kids being kept in cages,” Psaki told Doocy. “This is a facility that was opened that’s going to follow the same standards as other HHS facilities. It is not a replication, certainly not, that is never our intention of replicating the immigration policies of the past administration, but we are in a circumstance where we are not going to expel unaccompanied minors at the border. That would be inhumane.”

The need for such facilities, even for unaccompanied minors, would be obviated by a comprehensive set of immigration reforms and the end of the coronavirus pandemic, neither of which the Biden administration or Jesus Christ himself could get done in one month.

After about a half an hour of letting her tweet marinate, AOC suddenly came to that same more nuanced conclusion, slamming the fundamentals of the immigration system and writing “It’s only 2 mos into this admin & our fraught, unjust immigration system will not transform in that time.”

(It has been one month and four days since Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were inaugurated.)

Why the change of heart? That’s tough to say because the reactions to her initial tweet were an interesting mix. There were a number of replies asking her if she had bothered to read the article in question, as well as supporters cheering her on — and some right-wingers weaponizing her criticism of Biden. Did she read the article, see the kind of people who were agreeing with her, and change her mind?

Or was this a savvy social media move, posting the bold and provocatively blunt tweet, then whittling it down in the replies after it had gone viral? Maybe bIdEn gOt tO HeR!

Who knows, but AOC’s tweet continued to spark reactions. There were conservatives, including Fox News host Steve Hilton and Meghan McCain, who found her unjustified slam on the Biden/Harris administration useful. Some applauded, others mocked, all were delighted.

There were liberals who pushed back on AOC, myself included.

But there were plenty of progressives and others who either swallowed the lie, or happily exploited it.

AOC’s walk-back has received about a tenth of the engagement that her smear did. All in a day’s work.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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