Congressmen calls AOC “f*****g b***h”

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Tensions flared on Capitol Hill this week when a Republican lawmaker challenged Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on issues of crime and policing in an unusual — and decidedly personal — confrontation on the Capitol steps.

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) was coming down the steps on the east side of the Capitol on Monday, having just voted, when he approached Ocasio-Cortez, who was ascending into the building to cast a vote of her own.

In a brief but heated exchange, which was overheard by a reporter, Yoho told Ocasio-Cortez she was "disgusting" for recently suggesting that poverty and unemployment are driving a spike in crime in New York City during the coronavirus pandemic.

"You are out of your freaking mind," Yoho told her.

Ocasio-Cortez shot back, telling Yoho he was being "rude."

The two then parted ways. Ocasio-Cortez headed into the building, while Yoho, joined by Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), began descending toward the House office buildings. A few steps down, Yoho offered a parting thought to no one in particular.

"f*****g b***h," he said.

Ocasio-Cortez, a liberal firebrand and social media sensation, is no stranger to attacks from the right. But shortly after the exchange, she said it was the first time since she arrived in Congress that another lawmaker has challenged her so aggressively.

"That kind of confrontation hasn't ever happened to me — ever," she said. "I've never had that kind of abrupt, disgusting kind of disrespect levied at me."

Approached a few hours later, Yoho declined to discuss any aspect of the exchange. "No comment," he said.

Williams, who was in a position to hear the entire back-and-forth, said he wasn't paying it any mind.

"I was actually thinking, as I was walking down the stairs, I was thinking about some issues I've got in my district that need to get done," Williams said. "I don't know what their topic was. There's always a topic, isn't there?"

At issue were comments Ocasio-Cortez made earlier in the month during a virtual town hall with the mothers of two Black men, Eric Garner and Ramarley Graham, who were killed in recent years by New York police officers.

During the event, Ocasio-Cortez was asked about gun violence in New York, which has spiked this summer as the nation's largest city — which was clobbered by the coronavirus — slowly reopens from a months-long lockdown.

Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx, has long advocated for policies that cut police budgets and shift that funding to education, mental health and other social services. In her response, she stuck to that theme, suggesting the surge in crime stems from the economic hardship facing New York's poorest communities — and a failure of policymakers to fund programs aimed at leveling economic disparities.

“Crime is a problem of a diseased society, which neglects its marginalized people," she said during the July 9 event. "Policing is not the solution to crime.”

Ocasio-Cortez went on to propose that "economic desperation" caused by the coronavirus pandemic — combined with glitches in the delivery of federal stimulus checks and unemployment payments — has helped trigger the crime spike.

"Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren't paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent, and so they go out and they need to feed their child and they don't have money," she said. "So ... they're put in a position where they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry that night."

Conservatives pounced, accusing Ocasio-Cortez of propounding tortured rationales to excuse violent crime.

“There’s a big difference between shoplifting and cold-blooded murder, and for her not to know the difference is frankly astonishing,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) said last week on Fox News.

On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez defended her position, saying she made clear during the town hall that she was referring to "petty crime and crimes of poverty."

Conservative media, she said, has purposefully taken taken her comments out of context.

"I say, 'Listen, I'm not talking about violent crime, I'm not talking about shootings. But when it comes to petty theft, a lot of these are crimes of poverty, and people are desperate,'" she said. "So the right wing cuts up this clip, per usual, in a very misleading way. ... They basically [want] to make it seem as though I'm saying people are shooting each other because they're hungry."

Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged that her outspoken advocacy of liberal policies has made her an easy target of conservatives.

"Obviously, I'm no stranger to this," she said.

But the confrontation with Yoho was something new.

"In all these intense news cycles, I have never, ever been treated that way by another member before," she said. "I'm frankly quite taken aback."

Ocasio-Cortez tweeted about the exchange after this story was published online.

I never spoke to Rep. Yoho before he decided to accost me on the steps of the nation’s Capitol yesterday.

Believe it or not, I usually get along fine w/ my GOP colleagues. We know how to check our legislative sparring at the committee door.

But hey, “b*tches” get stuff done.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Thursday accused a Republican colleague of perpetuating a "culture" of sexism on Capitol Hill, using an unusual speech on the House floor to denounce Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) following their tense encounter at the Capitol three days before.

"This issue is not about one incident. It is cultural," she said. "It is a culture of ... impunity, of accepting of violence and violent language against women, and an entire structure of power that supports that."

Ocasio-Cortez, a liberal firebrand and social media sensation, has been railing against Yoho over the last 48 hours, using Twitter to condemn his conduct during their tense confrontation over anti-crime policies Monday.

She said that she was prepared to let the episode go, before Yoho took to the floor Wednesday morning to offer an apology — a speech that Democrats widely panned as insincere.

"And that I could not let go," she said.

House Democratic leaders took the rare step of allowing Ocasio-Cortez a full hour to make her case on the chamber floor. She used about 10 minutes of that window, before ceding the podium to a number of other Democrats, who urged Yoho to offer "a real apology," in the words of Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.).

"It's not expected that everyone in this chamber agrees with each other," Chu said. "It is expected, however, that we treat each other with dignity and respect."

One by one, Democrats male and female took to the floor to warn against both the acceptance of sexism at the highest levels of power, and an erosion of civility across Congress and the nation at large.

"We are not on the House floor today because of just one callous incident," said Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). "Unfortunately, what brings us to this moment are the structural and cultural conditions and, yes, the very men that have normalized the marginalization of women — and specifically women of color — since this nation's very inception."

Ocasio-Cortez repeated those words near the beginning of her speech on the House floor on Thursday — a particularly striking moment in a chamber that has yanked comments much tamer than that from the Congressional record.

She also took issue with Yoho’s statement, delivered Wednesday, that he would never use such crude language towards women because he has a wife and two daughters.

“Having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man,” she said. “Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man. And when a decent man messes up, as we all are bound to do, he tries his best and does apologize.”

Yoho issued a statement shortly after the Democrats had delivered their condemnations in which he downplayed the tensions surrounding Monday's encounter and denied using the sexist slur.

“No one was accosted, bullied, or attacked. This was a brief policy discussion plain and simple and we have our differences," he said. "We are both passionate members of Congress and equals. She has … every right [to] give her account of the conversation but she doesn’t have the right to inflate, talk about my family, or give an account that did not happen for political gain.

"The fact still remains, I am not going to apologize for something I didn’t say.”

In his own floor speech the day before, Yoho had apologized for the "abrupt manner" in which he confronted Ocasio-Cortez.

"It is true that we disagree on policies and visions for America, but that does not mean we should be disrespectful,” he said.

Yet Yoho did not acknowledge uttering the harshest language, referring only to "words attributed to me by the press." He added that the sexist words were not aimed directly at anybody — "and if they were construed that way, I apologize for their misunderstanding."

Democrats, rallying behind Ocasio-Cortez, wasted no time denouncing his speech as disingenuous.

"Telling a woman, 'I'm sorry you heard it that way' is a cliché as old as time to belittle and dismiss women after attacking them," said Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), noting that the current Congress boasts more women than any in history.

"We have got to do better."

Ocasio-Cortez, 30, is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She said she sought to organize Thursday's speeches to show her family that she wasn't one to take abuse sitting down.

"My father, thankfully, is not alive to see how Mr. Yoho treated his daughter. My mother got to see Mr. Yoho's disrespect on the floor of this House towards me on television," she said. "And I am here because I have to show my parents that I am their daughter, and that they did not raise me to accept abuse from men."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who had welcomed Yoho’s apology on Wednesday, changed his tune a day later, calling it a “non-apology” and condemning the “attack” on a colleague.

“All of the men on this side of the aisle are supportive of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” he said.

While a host of Democrats were urging Yoho to take another stab at contrition, one lawmaker stood out as not being among them: Ocasio-Cortez herself.

“I do not need Rep. Yoho to apologize to me. Clearly, he does not want to,” she said. “And I will not stay up late at night waiting for an apology from a man who has no remorse for ... using abusive language towards women.”

Ocasio-Cortez accosted by GOP lawmaker over remarks: 'That kind of confrontation hasn't ever happened to me' ...

We often talk and complain about behaviors now considered grounds for cancelling that were once considered normal. It is true that back in the day it was not uncommon for guys to say those two words about specific girls/women. It was never appropriate it a professional setting and especially in a public professional setting.

"We the people" are supposed to learn civility with one another, but elected leaders like this Yoho guy calls a young woman such demeaning names just because he disapproves of her politics.

i suspect it was a LOT more than displeasure at her politics. it was more likely because she didn't fit into his little patriarchal box [barefoot and pregnant and utterly subservient to men like himself].

I'm sure you're right.