Fox Business’ Charlie Gasparino Says AOC Has ‘Never Been Poor Before’ and ‘Doesn’t Know Poor People’

On Friday, Fox Business’ Charlie Gasparino criticized Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) by saying that she had “never been poor before” and “doesn’t know poor people.”

His comments came as part of a segment on Fox News’ America Reports with Sandra Smith about Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) appointments on a new House committee to “address wealth inequality in America.”

“Let’s be her committee right here, right now,” said Gasparino. “Madame Speaker, if you want to deal with wealth inequality go to the Federal Reserve chairman — what’s his name, Powell? — and tell him to take interest rates out from being at zero. The minute you keep interest rates at zero, really rich people are gonna speculate in the market and make a ton of money. That was the biggest tax cut ever for the rich and it’s happening still, which is why we have wealth inequality.”

“Poor people don’t buy stocks, they do through their pensions and 401(k)s, but they are not invested in trading every day,” he continued, noting that a similar situation had occurred during former President Barack Obama’s term when the interest rates were also at zero.

Smith then brought up some of the specific members of this new committee, including Ocasio-Cortez.

Gasparino mentioned that he and Ocasio-Cortez had graduated from the same high school, as Smith introduced video clips of several Democrats on the new committee. Said Gasparino about Ocasio-Cortez:

She’s never been poor before, I mean, that’s one of the problems. We grew up in the same town. My father was an iron worker and a bartender; her father was an architect. She grew up comfortably middle-class. She doesn’t know poor people. If you talk to poor people and working class people, they want more rich people. How did my old man make money? Because he was a bartender. He needed rich people to, essentially, tip him, he needed rich people to build stuff —

“To run up tabs,” Smith interjected.

“She has no clue about this,” Gasparino said, adding that the committee was “absurd,” because it wasn’t going to do anything other than just “talk about stuff,” not accomplish any meaningful policy reforms.

Indeed, Ocasio-Cortez’s father was an architect and the family was financially comfortable as she grew up, but sadly he passed away from lung cancer in 2008 during her second year of college, in the middle of the financial crisis. Her mother went back to work, driving a bus and cleaning houses, to support the family without her husband’s income. After graduating from college, Ocasio-Cortez worked as an educational director and also got a second job as a bartender/waitress to attempt to help her mother avoid foreclosure on the family home. Eventually, the real estate market recovered, her mother sold the property, and moved to Florida, where the cost of living was cheaper.

Gasparino, as he has described in media interviews and on-air appearances over the years, came from a humbler background than the representative for New York’s 14th congressional district. By any reasonably objective measure, Gasparino’s family was multiple rungs lower on the socioeconomic ladder than Ocasio-Cortez’s for their entire upbringing.

The Fox Business senior business correspondent made thoughtful points about the effect of the Fed’s low interest rates on directing investment, and he is virtually certain to be correct that this issue will not get much attention from Pelosi’s new committee. There are very obvious points to be made about the effect of oppressively high taxes driving Ocasio-Cortez’s mother to move to Florida, where our lack of a state income tax has beguiled many former New Yorkers.

But to say that Ocasio-Cortez has “never been poor” and “doesn’t know poor people”? That’s imprecise at best, and unfair at worst.

Her surprising political debut spawned a deluge of obsequiously fawning articles that nonetheless showed that the family was not destitute — there are no anecdotes of a young Alexandria being homeless or going to bed without dinner — but the years her mother spent scrubbing toilets in other people’s homes and the future congresswoman was working “18-hour shifts” at a bar are not what most Americans would call “comfortably middle class.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s student loans were a theme for her underdog campaign, as she advocated for free tuition and the elimination of student debt. Many people disagree with her views on this issue, but the reality of her substantial college debt is yet another indicator of her family’s financial status: with the loss of her father and the income from his business early in her college term, she racked up debt.

As to Gasparino’s other critique, that Ocasio-Cortez “doesn’t know poor people,” it is preposterous to suggest that in her years of political activism with a variety of environmental and progressive causes — not to mention the work at the bar — she still doesn’t know any “poor people,” no matter how Gasparino or anyone else defines it.

Is AOC “poor”? Certainly not now. Was she ever? Not during her childhood, but there is a gray area in her college and immediate post-college years where there’s an argument to be made that she faced financial challenges. Working an extra job to hang on to the family home through the turmoil of the real estate bubble bursting is a stressful experience that is all-too-familiar to many Americans.

We’re blessed in America that being “poor” does not entail watching parents watching their children die of starvation. The only experience I ever had with dysentery was playing Oregon Trail in elementary school. It shouldn’t be necessary to prove that Ocasio-Cortez wins some sort of Poverty Olympics in order for her to be able to say that she has understanding and empathy for issues facing working class Americans.

It’s completely fair to disagree with Ocasio-Cortez’s positions on the issues. I certainly do, as have many of her fellow Democrats — including President Joe Biden, Pelosi, and other members of the party leadership. But suggesting that she cannot understand what it is like to be poor is a distraction, and unhelpful to the actual debate.

Watch the video above, via Fox News.

This article has been updated to reflect that Gasparino’s title at Fox Business is senior business correspondent.

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

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