Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasts conditions at migrant detention centers

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insisted that top Democrats House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should no longer head the party during a new podcast with The Intercept. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez savaged the Democrat Party leadership in Congress declaring that it was time to move on from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “I do think we need new leadership in the Democratic Party,”. “If Representative Ocasio-Cortez does not apologize immediately, we will be forced to find alternative means to condemn this regrettable statement,” Roy, wrote in a letter to Pelosi on Thursday.

Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who did not vote when her name was called, was initially praised by her supporters on Twitter for not voting for Pelosi – for whom she later voted. Fellow progressive squad members Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Presley also voted for Pelosi, who secured 216 votes.

Border Patrol pushes back, says Democratic lawmaker's accusations aren't true; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back Saturday night after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized her and other far-left freshmen congresswomen for voting against a $4.6 billion border bill that President Trump signed into law on Monday.

Congress had approved the bill with help from moderate Democrats – and in a New York Times interview Pelosi slammed the progressive wing of her party for not also supporting the humanitarian-assistance measure.

“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”

But Ocasio-Cortez took a different view.

“That public ‘whatever’ is called public sentiment,” Ocasio-Cortez answered later in a Twitter message. “And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country.”

In a separate message, Ocasio-Cortez also defended the use of social media by herself and her fellow newcomers to Congress, over the more traditional – and often more expensive and time-consuming — methods favored by longer-serving lawmakers.

“I find it strange when members act as though social media isn’t important,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “They set millions of [dollars] on [fire] to run TV ads so people can see their message.

“I haven’t dialed for dollars *once* this year,” she added, “& have more time to do my actual job. Yet we’d rather campaign like it’s 2008.”

Ocasio-Cortez also criticized the Democrats who decided to vote along with Republicans on the spending plan to address issues at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I don’t believe it was a good idea for Dems to blindly trust the Trump admin when so many kids have died in their custody. It’s a huge mistake,” she wrote. “This admin also refuses to hand over docs to Congress on the whereabouts of families. People’s lives are getting bargained, & for what?”

In a Washington Post op-ed published Friday, author Ryan Grim writes that Ocasio-Cortez sees older Democrats as too eager to compromise with Republicans, whom she regards as “clowns.”

“Ocasio-Cortez told me that she treats Republicans like buffoons because that’s how they’ve behaved for as long as she can remember,” Grim writes. “’Even before I was of voting age, I saw Republicans accuse the Obamas of doing a ‘terrorist fist bump,’ so they’ve been clowns since I was a teen,’ she said.”

“Ocasio-Cortez told me that she treats Republicans like buffoons because that’s how they’ve behaved for as long as she can remember.”

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Meanwhile, some Republicans and other critics have called Ocasio-Cortez hypocritical for opposing the border bill, which her critics say was designed to address many of the problems that she and other far-left Democrats have been complaining about in recent weeks.

“People like AOC create the disaster, refuse to fix it, vote against funding to help people and then go down there to attack the people who are saying to her, ‘We don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough facilities,’” former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” last week, calling Ocasio-Cortez 'viciously dishonest.'

Democrats divided? Nancy Pelosi takes shots at socialism, party's progressives

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticizes outspoken freshmen Democrats' embrace of socialism; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'

Nearly 70 Democrats have been voting in tandem with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s scoffing that the far-left Democratic wing was only “like five people.”

Pelosi downplayed the influence of the new-wave progressives, particularly Ocasio-Cortez, who pushed the party leftwards, during an interview with CBS News' Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes,” saying that despite the noise, the party is still largely centrist and rejects socialism “as an economic system.”

“You have these wings, AOC and her group on one side,” Stahl told Pelosi, to which the 79-year-old replied: “That's like five people.”

But according to Fox News’ review of voting records using ProPublica data tools, 68 lawmakers voted with Ocasio-Cortez at least 95 percent of the times since January, representing over a fourth of all seats held by Democrats.

The lawmakers voting in tandem with the New York Democrat aren’t just freshman lawmakers, but include a number of other high-profile Democrats.

Presidential candidates Eric Swalwell and Tulsi Gabbard both voted with Ocasio-Cortez 95 percent of the times. Rep. Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chair, also voted with her 95 percent percent of the time.

Pelosi’s claim that the progressive caucus represents about “five people” appears to be correct only when counting lawmakers who voted 97 percent of the time with the New York Democrat. Those include Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Donald Payne, D-N.J.

During the CBS interview, Pelosi’s remarks were met with pushback, pointing out that the progressive group has more than five people, to which she responded saying she’s a progressive as well.

She added that congressional Democrats “by and large ... know that we have to hold the center, that we have to go down the mainstream,” and said she “reject[s] socialism as an economic system.”

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“If people have that view, that's their view,' she said. 'That is not the view of the Democratic Party.”

Pelosi continued taking a swipe at far-left Democrats during her trip to Ireland and the United Kingdom, telling an audience on Monday that both she and Ocasio-Cortez won in districts where “glass of water' with a 'D' next to it could win.

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“When we won this election, it wasn’t in districts like mine or Alexandria’s,” Pelosi said. “[S]he’s a wonderful member of Congress as I think all of our colleagues will attest. But those are districts that are solidly Democratic.”

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To drive the point home she picked up a water glass next to her and said: “This glass of water would win with a ‘D’ next to its name in those districts.”

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Fox News’ Nicole Darrah and Bradford Betz contributed to this report.