Ocasio-Cortez Responds to Critics: People More Concerned With Being Factually Correct Than Morally Right

In her 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) responded to criticisms of her “fuzzy” math by saying people are people “more concerned” with being accurate on facts than being morally right.

“One of the criticisms of you is that your math is fuzzy. The Washington Post recently awarded with you four Pinocchios for misstating some statistics about Pentagon spending.” Cooper explained to Ocasio-Cortez.

“If people really want to blow up one figure here or one word there, I would argue they are missing the forest for the tree,” she replied. “I think there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”

The CNN anchor responded by pointing out being factually correct on subjects matter as well.

“It’s absolutely important. And whenever I make a mistake, I say ‘Okay this was clumsy.’ And then I restate what my point was,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

The Washington Post fact-check Cooper referred to was in response to when she said Pentagon spending could instead be used for other things: “$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon.”

The problem was Ocasio-Cortez misunderstood the article she was responding to.

“Regardless, in the situation Skidmore is describing, the $21 trillion is not one big pot of dormant money collecting dust somewhere. It’s the sum of all transactions — both inflows and outflows — for which the Defense Department did not have adequate documentation,” the Washington Post explained.

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