AOC Says House GOP Driven by White Supremacists and Extremists: Party Imposes ‘No Consequences’ for Racism and Insurrection

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said that the new House GOP caucus is populated by “legitimate white supremacists” and that the party’s leadership is too cowed to impose any consequences for open racism, insurrection, and calls for violence.

At the end of his long opening segment on Wednesday, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes asked the congresswoman about her personal level of safety going to work at the Capitol, just weeks after it was ransacked by a violent pro-Trump mob, one of whom has since been arrested for explicitly threatening to “assassinate AOC.”

“Congressman Hakeem Jeffries was on the program last night talking about his family member receiving texts saying, we’re coming for you, we’re outside your house,” Hayes noted of his Tuesday night guest. “How do you understand the nature of the caucus of the Republican Party that you serve with right now in the aftermath of this and the vote they took to overturn the election and this desire to, quote, turn the page?”

“Yeah, you know, I actually sense a profound difference between the Republican caucus of last term, the 115th Congress, and the Republican caucus that — of this term,” Ocasio-Cortez explained. “It really felt that, last term, the Republican caucus was one of extreme fealty to Donald Trump. There were some that were true believers. Others that simply remained quiet out of cowardice and out of fear of the president’s retribution. But this term there are legitimate white supremacist sympathizers that sit at the heart and at the core of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives.

“It increasingly seems, unfortunately, that in the House Republican caucus, [House Minority Leader] Kevin McCarthy answers to these QAnon members of congress, not the other way around,” she added, alluding to GOP Congresswoman and QAnon conspiracist Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA). Shocking news reports in the past day found that Greene had openly endorsed political violence against high-profile Democrats, among them Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and publicly harassed a survivor of the Parkland mass shooting on Capitol Hill and denounced him as “#littleHitler” online.

In reaction to those incendiary comments, McCarthy promised on Wednesday that he would pull Greene aside for a private conversation about her “deeply disturbing” comments targeting her political opponents — but made no other pledges about sanctioning her. Ocasio-Cortez was highly skeptical that this talking to was anything other than a purely cosmetic public relations ploy.

“I’ve seen Kevin McCarthy pull someone aside before for a talking to. And that representative that I saw him do that to was representative Ted Yoho of Florida,” AOC recounted of the former Congressman who called her a “fucking bitch” and “disgusting” in front of reporters. “What Kevin McCarthy did was that he pulled him aside to essentially excuse his behavior, to allow it, and to abet it. And actually Kevin McCarthy’s lack of holding his own caucus accountable is one major reason why I went to the floor last year to hold Yoho accountable myself.”

“What is he going to tell them? Keep it up?” she added. “Because there are no consequences in the Republican caucus for violence. There’s no consequences for racism. No consequences for misogyny. No consequences for insurrection. And no consequence means that they condone it. It means that that silence is acceptance, and they want it because they know that it is a core animating political energy for them.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.