CNN Anderson Cooper 360 guest host John Berman kicked off Thursday’s show with a nearly 15-minute interview with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that mostly consisted of him opening up the floor to her to accuse Republicans of being bigots for kicking Rep. Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee and for engaging in “stochastic terrorism.”
Berman led off by putting the ball on the tee, “So Representative Omar said that the vote today was about revenge. Is that how you see it?”
Naturally, it was:
Absolutely. You know, I think this was about revenge. This was about petty politics. But also, I think it's also important to state that this was not just about Republicans trying to feed a base that they have already primed for years under Donald Trump with racism, misogyny, xenophobia, Islamophobia, but also it represents a stripping of an important perspective on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that Ilhan Omar as a refugee, as an immigrant, as the only Hijabi woman in the United States Congress presents, and that perspective is critical in terms of American foreign policy.
American foreign policy will survive without all the anti-Semitic tweets and comparisons to Hamas and the Taliban. For his part, later in the interview, Berman asked what it is like for her to share a committee with Rep. Paul Gosar, “Did you feel safe sitting there with him?”
Ocasio-Cortez replied with her typical alarmist rhetoric, “I think it's uncomfortable serving with people who engage in what many experts deem stochastic terrorism, which is the incitement of violence in a -- which is an incitement of violence using digital means and large platforms. So that individual themselves may not be the one that's wielding a weapon.”
She also claimed that, “I have had to ride, as has Representative Omar, I have consistently had to ride in 20,000-pound armored vehicles, you know, engaging in some of the most gruesome threats that you can imagine that were incited by Republican members.”
Who knew that illegally parked Teslas came with armor?
Throughout the interview, Berman did manage point out that Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell are white and that Omar will still have a seat on the Budget Committee, the same of which could not be said for the Republicans that were kicked off their committees by Democrats, but when it came to accusing Republicans of inciting terrorism, he simply moved on by asking if Ocasio-Cortez if she believes Trump will be the 2024 Republican nominee.
This segment was sponsored by Ancestry.
Here is a transcript for the February 2 show:
CNN Anderson Cooper 360
2/2/2023
8:02 PM ET
JOHN BERMAN: So Representative Omar said that the vote today was about revenge. Is that how you see it?ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Absolutely. You know, I think this was about revenge. This was about petty politics. But also, I think it's also important to state that this was not just about Republicans trying to feed a base that they have already primed for years under Donald Trump with racism, misogyny, xenophobia, Islamophobia, but also it represents a stripping of an important perspective on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that Ilhan Omar as a refugee, as an immigrant, as the only Hijabi woman in the United States Congress presents, and that perspective is critical in terms of American foreign policy.
…
BERMAN: Did you feel safe sitting there with him?
OCASIO-CORTEZ: I think it's uncomfortable serving with people who engage in what many experts deem stochastic terrorism, which is the incitement of violence in a -- which is an incitement of violence using digital means and large platforms. So that individual themselves may not be the one that's wielding a weapon.
But I have had to ride, as has Representative Omar, I have consistently had to ride in 20,000-pound armored vehicles, you know, engaging in some of the most gruesome threats that you can imagine that were incited by Republican members.
This is not just about a tweet, it is about what life looks like, and the marshaling of hundreds, thousands if not millions of people into doing something and Donald Trump knows that very well. And he uses and used his rallies very strategically, in order to engage in political intimidation of what he deemed his political enemies.
