News
Mimi Launder
Jul 02, 2018
We are in a world rocked by political scandals - from Watergate to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky; the MPs' expenses scandal to Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez growing up in a modest house... Wait what?
A conservative TV host recently took to Twitter bristling with anger that Ocasio-Cortez - the millennial who stunned Democrats after beating incumbent Joe Crawley in a New York congressional primary - grew up in a home with a garden, windows and possibly even bedrooms.
John Cardillo, a host of Newsmax's America Talks Live, shared a picture of her childhood home in Yorktown Heights and claimed she lived there until she studied at Brown University.
Unlike the initial tweet, Osacio-Cortez's response oozed with class, professionalism and basic fact-checking.
Nope, she didn't attend Brown University and actually lived in the Bronx's Parkchester apartments, before moving to Yorktown Heights aged five, where she attended a better public school, according to the New York Times.
After studying at Boston University, she returned to the Bronx to pursue work in education and community organising, according to her website. When her father passed away from cancer aged 48, she was forced to work two jobs and 18-hour shifts in restaurants to help keep her family afloat.
Cardillo responded with a clarification, before adding: "That said, you're not a girl from the Bronx".
Another Twitter user took this problematic tweet deftly apart all over again.
Rather than complain that she dare live in a house designed to fit humans...
...or grumble that she didn't grow up on the street in literal rags...
Maybe we should concentrate on more important things?
More: 6 of the most important things you need to know about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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