Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demanded an apology Monday from White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for purported racism, because the spokeswoman hadn’t addressed her by her title.
But Ms. McEnany had.
And the White House swiftly said no dice on any apology.
The New York Democrat demanded the apology while quote-tweeting a Politico reporter who noted, correctly as far as it went, that Ms. McEnany had referred to “Biden adviser Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.” The reporter tagged Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter handle.
She took the bait, demanding an apology and setting a next-day deadline.
Ms. McEnany “wouldn’t be the first person to mistake a women of color for having a lower position or title than she does, but Kayleigh - in case you haven’t picked up a newspaper in two years, I’m a Congresswoman,” she helpfully informed the spokeswoman.
“The @PressSec comment is steeped in a long, hurtful, & horrendous history of stripping women of color of titles and diminishing them to ’the help.’ Perhaps she isn’t aware that what she did is mired in racist history. If that is the case, I look forward to her apology tomorrow,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez concluded.
However, neither Politico’s Jake Sherman nor the congresswoman he notified had noted the entirety of Ms. McEnany’s sentence.
She had been asked about the “defund the police movement and replied Mr. Trump is “appalled” by it.
“That fact that you have sitting congresswomen wanting to defund the police — notably Rashida Tlaib; notably Biden adviser AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; former Clinton and Eric Holder spokesperson Brian Fallon wanting to defund our police across the country - it is extraordinary,” she said.
Alyssa Farah, White House director of strategic communications, chided Ms. Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter.
She provided the entire quote in one tweet to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and then noted: “she literally called you Congresswoman, @AOC.”
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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