Glenn Greenwald Slams AOC’s Apparent Hypocrisy in Voting ‘Present’ on Iron Dome Funding, Points Out She Previously Railed Against Members Who Vote Present

Jackson RichmanSep 24th, 2021, 10:56 am
 

Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald slammed on Friday the apparent hypocrisy Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in voting “present” on Thursday on the bill to provide $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system, citing that Ocasio-Cortez slammed former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) for voting the same way on former President Donald Trump’s 2019 impeachment.

“After doing my due diligence in reviewing the 658-page impeachment report, I came to the conclusion that I could not in good conscience vote either yes or no,” said Gabbard after the impeachment vote.

“I could not in good conscience vote against impeachment because I believe President Trump is guilty of wrongdoing,” she added. “I also could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting president must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country.”

“Whenever we have a vote, we should vote ‘yes’ and we should vote ‘no,’” said Ocasio-Cortez, also after the impeachment vote. “Voting ‘present’ is a very tough position to be in. To not take a stand in a moment that is so consequential, I think it’s quite difficult.”

In a video posted on Twitter, Greenwald asked how Ocasio-Cortez can “reconcile her condemnation of a ‘present’ vote when it came to Tulsi Gabbard’s doing that in the context of impeachment.”

He continued, “How can she reconcile saying ‘whenever we have a vote, we should vote ‘yes’ and we should vote ‘no’ with what the stunt she pulled today of first voting ‘no’ but then making sure she wasn’t a ‘no’ vote, was only a ‘present’ vote so that for future runs in New York for Senate or governor no one can ever say she voted ‘no’ to deny Israel additional funding for its military.”

Greenwald also noted that Ocasio-Cortez voted “present” when it came to supplemental $1.9 billion for Capitol Police in May. By Ocasio-Cortez and two fellow “Squad” members, Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) voting “present,” the bill, which received no GOP support and opposition from six Democrats, passed by one vote in the narrowly-controlled Democratic House.

“My question for AOC about this, aside from the grotesque hypocrisy again of voting ‘present’ on a very important bill after condemning Tulsi Gabbard for doing it in saying we should always vote ‘yes’ or always vote ‘no’ is how could you justify voting ‘present’ when you had the power in your hands to stop more police spending when you had just spent a year chanting in the street ‘defund the police,’ ‘defund the police,’” said Greenwald.

“You had it in your power to defund the police or to prevent an increase in police spending and you were too scared to use it because you didn’t want to sink [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi’s added money for the bill,” he continued. “And because you want to defund the police when it comes to police that protect other people, ordinary people, working class people and poor people. But when it comes to the police that protect you at the Capitol, you want $2 billion more so they can put up more security measures, put fences around the Capitol, put walls around the Capitol and make sure there are more people to protect you.”

Watch above.

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