It wasn’t true when Barack Obama said it, and it’s not true now. But Democratic wunderkind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got a round of applause at an MLK Day conversation with author Ta-Nehisi Coates when she delivered a repackaged version of his “you didn’t build that” remark. Except Ocasio-Cortez’s version came out from dumber because … well — she is far dumber.
The freshman congresswoman delivered other “fortune cookies” during her defense of socialism. Try this one: “No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars.” This one-liner also earned her applause, despite the total falsity of the claim. After adding, “I’m not here to villainize and to say billionaires are inherently morally corrupt,” she proceeded to villainize billionaires as inherently morally corrupt by insinuating they earn their fortunes by “sitting on a couch while thousands of people” toil on their behalf for “slave wages.” And who are these poor slobs? They’re “undocumented people,” “black and brown people being paid under a living wage,” and “single mothers.” She left out widows and orphans, but she’ll mention them next time.
AOC on why successful businessmen don’t deserve their wealth: “You didn’t make those widgets! You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern day slave wages, and in some cases real modern-day slavery; you made that money off the backs of undocumented people …" pic.twitter.com/Y2w3nSfezo
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 20, 2020
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
As for Ocasio-Cortez’s insinuations that rich people just sit on their rump watching the cash roll in, entrepreneur and self-made millionaire Grant Cardone told CNBC, “Most people work 9-to-5. I work 95 hours [per week]. If you ever want to be a millionaire, you need to stop doing the 9-to-5 and start doing 95,” our about 14 hours a day — seven days! Other highly successful businessmen have echoed that sentiment.
The most frightening thing about Ocasio-Cortez, apart from how seriously she is taken by some on the Left who should know better (Coates, his views notwithstanding, is such a person), is the utter childishness of her world view. You could tell her that one well-documented way billionaires earn their fortune is by going door-to-door in low-income neighborhoods and shaking loose the change out of the pockets of residents. In her next public appearance, she would not only repeat the claim but call it as a “statistic.”
