‘My Friend Cortez’: AOC Fist Bumps GOP Rep. Burchett At Bipartisan Presser For Stock Trading Ban

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Tim Burchett (R-TN) joined several of their colleagues from both sides of the aisle on Wednesday to promote their new legislation banning members of Congress from trading stocks.

“I will introduce my friend Cortez. Come up and speak. Thanks, Cortez,” Burchett said to introduce Ocasio-Cortez, following his remarks. Ocasio-Cortez and Burchett then did a friendly fist bump.

“Thank you, thank you, Tim. Good afternoon, everyone. Hope everyone’s doing well. I got to say, I know it was—man, what was it, like six or seven years ago now, Chip—that you and I were elected here. And one of the first conversations that Representative Chip Roy and I had had to do with money and politics, I remember, and just in general,” Ocasio-Cortez began, offering praise for Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) – one of the most conservative members of the House.

“And, you know, I think that this issue has brought so many of us across the political spectrum together because we are united by the value that people should feel that their elected representative puts them and their interests first, and that we are here first and foremost to do the job that the public has sent us to do,” Ocasio-Cortez continued, adding:

And, you know, in many ways, I feel like this press conference and this podium shouldn’t necessarily be facing out here. I don’t think we need to sell the American people on this. We need to be turning it around and making sure that we get this thing past the post.

And I want to thank Congressman Roy for the effort you’ve put in this Congress specifically to move this forward. And every year we’ve been getting closer. And I do believe, as we said, that this year we’re going to get the vote.

And I also want to thank Brian Fitzpatrick as well for—oh, here you go—for some of the work that we’ve done in co-sponsoring our original bill on this.

But it’s very rare, I feel, in Washington that when we bring multiple stakeholders and folks together to negotiate on a bill, that you leave that room feeling like the bill got better. A lot of times it feels that we’ll get to an agreement and we’re holding our nose to get something past the post. But I genuinely feel in this process that putting all of our bills together, we’ve actually ended up with a product that is legitimately stronger than the sum of its parts.

And it is one of those rare moments where I feel like Washington is working the way that it’s supposed to work, and it feels foreign, and it feels alien, and it’s like, “What’s going on here?” But I also think it is proof that things can work here. And when we put our disagreements aside—of which of course there may be many—but we focus on the things that we have in common, we can make our country better, we can make this institution better, and we can increase and earn the faith of the American people, which is really genuinely the core of our work here.

And so to that end, I want to thank everyone for their incredibly hard work. We are going to get this done. It requires standing up against the powers that be. But because of the support of the American people on this issue, you all have generated the momentum necessary to give us the power to be able to do this. And I look forward to bringing this to a vote. I look to banning the trading of individual stock on the floor and by members of Congress. And I’m looking forward to making this place a better place that puts the American people first.

So thank you all so much.