Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has been spotted flying first class on her way to her nationwide “Fight Oligarchy” tour with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), which has gotten the congresswoman into trouble with those who view the pricey airfare as antithetical to her progressive ideology.
But the bad PR could prove to be the least of AOC’s troubles given how she has recently been ramping up her anti-Trump rhetoric – potentially to the point of defamation.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Steve Deace of BlazeTV and Delano Squires of the Heritage Foundation to discuss Ocasio-Cortez’s comments and why she might not be able to get away with them much longer.
Defamatory Rhetoric?
AOC and Sanders took their Fight Oligarchy tour to Idaho on Monday after previously visiting Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and California. In front of the crowds gathered at the Ford Idaho Center, the duo spoke of the “extraordinary danger” they believe the United States currently faces.
Ocasio-Cortez suggested her own party’s commitment to the status quo has facilitated the rise of an oligarchy in the U.S. “It’ll only get worse unless we act,” she told the audience, calling for immediate action from those gathered at the Ford Idaho Center in Nampa.
But it was her remarks about Donald Trump that got attention for all the wrong reasons. “AOC has been out there on this… ‘Fight Oligarchy’ tour with Bernie Sanders from which she travels… sipping her champagne in the first class cabin as the losers and plebs walk by on their way to coach,” Megyn noted. “And she has decided to ramp up her anti-Trump rhetoric in a way she has done before, but that could be problematic for her if Trump actually decides to pay some attention.”
Here was AOC on Monday: “Donald Trump is a criminal who was found guilty of 34 felony counts of fraud, liable for sexual abuse,” she claimed. “Of course, he’s lying and abusing and manipulating the stock market too. When he talks about rapists and criminals, he should look in the mirror.”
The characterization of the president as akin to “rapists and criminals” is not unlike what she said about him in an Instagram post prior to the inauguration in January. “All these journalists are like, ‘Congresswoman, are you going to the inauguration?’ ‘Congresswoman, are you going to the inauguration?’ ‘Are you going to the inauguration,'” she said. “Let me make myself clear: I don’t celebrate rapists, so, no, I’m not going to the inauguration tomorrow.”
The Legal Case
As you may recall, the suggestion that Trump is a rapist is exactly what led ABC News to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by the president after anchor George Stephanopoulos repeatedly claimed he was “found liable for rape” during a March 2024 interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC).
In reality, a jury found Trump liable of sexually abusing Carroll and specifically answered “no” to the question on the May 2023 verdict form that asked: “Did Ms. Carroll prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Mr. Trump raped Ms. Carroll?”
While members of Congress have enormous leeway to say what they want during legislative activities under the Speech or Debate Clause of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, Megyn said Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t enjoy those same protections on this tour.
“Stating that he is a ‘rapist’ is a statement of fact which is false and has been rejected by a court of law, and she continues to do it,” Megyn noted. “We have gotten so used to people saying the worst things about Trump… but if [you] or anyone you know got called that word, you would absolutely sue her and the standard should not change just because you are Donald Trump.”
Deace agreed. “I am 10,000 percent in favor of consequences being ratcheted up comprehensively in the culture at the moment,” he said. “To me, this would be just restitutional for everything they put the president through in the last year and a half… I’m kind of surprised he hasn’t done this already.”
While Squires was aligned that “if you are going to make a claim about somebody and you are going to accuse them of some of the worst crimes known to men, you better come with some evidence” – and that includes Trump – he also saw another flaw in Ocasio-Cortez’s logic.
As he explained, working in local government in a blue state for 15 years gave him a unique understanding of how the left operates. “My last year it was in the Gun Violence Prevention Office, and I did some restorative justice training… and one of the things that I noticed is that the people in restorative justice were always against punishment,” he recalled. “They hated the punitive aspect of the justice system unless it was against people that they didn’t like.”
“AOC is using sort of words like ‘felon’ and ‘criminal’ in a pejorative sense today, when she is talking about Trump. Any other time it would be ‘Ban the box,’ ‘we shouldn’t ask people about their criminal history,’ ‘people deserve a second chance,'” he continued. “So, the left really isn’t against ‘mass incarceration’ – they just want a weaponized legal system so that they can enact vengeance against the people that they do not like.”
That is why, Megyn said, Trump’s only option is legal action. “He is not going to shut her up unless he does sue her and make an example out of her,” she concluded. “It would be amazing, but, you know, I do think he has more important things to do at the moment.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Deace and Squires by tuning in to episode 1,049 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.