OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
4:18 PM – Tuesday, September 27, 2023
Elon Musk called Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) “not that smart” after she claimed that New York City’s immigrant crisis was less chaotic in comparison to the number of people who came to the United States through Ellis Island over a century ago.
On Friday, Ocasio-Cortez, 33, made an announcement in a video that was posted to her Instagram account.
“The numbers — when it comes to people coming to NYC today — are nothing, I’m telling you, nothing, compared to the daily amounts of people that we saw coming in through Ellis Island in the first half of last century,” she said.
The leftist “Eat the Rich” representative, who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx, stated: “More than 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. We had seen just huge numbers of people coming in per day that far eclipsed what we’re seeing right now.”
AOC and Musk have been known to have ongoing feuds, which usually take place on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, which is owned by Musk.
The NYC representative’s attempt to play down the current crisis was criticized on social media by a number of conservative commentators after the video was shared to X.
On Wednesday, Musk replied to an X user’s comment on a previous post made by AOC, in which she commented on the emerging Republican-led shutdown of the government.
Musk later responded to the video of AOC saying, “She’s just not that smart.”
The NYC representative then replied back to the billionaire entrepreneur to refute his statement. She began explaining her background and credentials as being the “youngest female in American history to be elected to the U.S. Congress.”
“I wasn’t born rich and became the youngest woman in American history to be elected to Congress,” AOC said in her response. “Then I investigated Cohen, authored the largest FEMA funeral assistance program in history and led the creation of a US Climate Corps to create tens of thousands of new jobs. Stay mad.”
AOC declared that she was going to trade in her own Tesla vehicle in favor of a union-made electric vehicle (EV), amongst major strikes by the United Auto Workers. She explained how she bought her Tesla during the pandemic to commute between her NYC district and Washington, D.C.
“We’re actually looking into trading in our car now. So we’re looking into it and hopefully we will soon,” she told CBS.
Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, is a vocal opponent of unions.
In addition, Ocasio-Cortez has made several claims that Musk has interfered with her account on X. She complained how, after she was involved in an online argument with Musk, her account had stopped working efficiently.
Regarding NYC’s current immigrant situation, more than 116,000 undocumented immigrants have crossed illegally from Mexico and other nations in order to seek asylum and receive additional resources in the U.S.
Almost half of them are being housed in the city’s shelter system while tens of thousands of others are staying at local hotels where they are enjoying amenities paid for by taxpayers.
Ocasio-Cortez credits part of the crisis to U.S. sanctions against Venezuela while highlighting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s responsibility for the immigrant influx as well.
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