Around New England

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez May Not Know Much, But Her Handlers Think They Do

March 14, 2019

How does someone as little-informed as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez become the most famous member of Congress almost overnight?

Well-funded radical leftists behind the scenes who scripted her campaign are also scripting her public statements, according to an article by Frank Hawkins in The American Thinker.

The article includes a video showing what it calls “her mysterious chief of staff,” Saikat Chakrabati, making a point about how much money poor people make during a podcast that is the substantially same as a point Ocasio-Cortez made days later during a televised interview, as if the key words were memorized in sequence.

Chakrabati figures in the campaign finance complaint recently made against Ocasio-Cortez, and he also appears to have been involved in drafting the infamous Frequently Asked Questions on the Green New Deal that Ocasio-Cortez initially denied issuing. It included, among other things, a statement that the government would pay those “unable or unwilling to work.”

The article calls Chakrabati the “Rasputin” of Ocasio-Cortez, after the sinister Russian monk who manipulated the Russian czar’s family during the years leading up to the Russian Revolution.

Ocasio-Cortez is the best known of 26 previously not-well-known left-wing candidates in 2018 endorsed by so-called Justice Democrats who won Democratic primaries for Congress. Six who won their general election. The list includes U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Dorchester), who was a Boston city councilor when she launched what was initially considered a longshot primary challenge against liberal congressman Michael Capuano, a former mayor of Somerville.

It also includes other first-term members of Congress who have been getting more attention than Pressley:  U.S. Representative Ilhan Oman of Minnesota and U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

What is the goal of the Justice Democrats?

Hawkins says:

“The larger plot was and remains to recruit attractive people to run for Congress. The longer-term strategy seems to be to gain control of the Democrat Party, Congress and ultimately the United States government itself. Their stated goal ‘was to run hundreds of Democratic candidates’ who do ‘not take corporate money and serve the voters rather than the donors,’ as well as ‘capture a significant amount of Congress with strong progressives’ and ‘overpower the corporate Democrats’.”

Hawkins argues what some other observers have suggested recently — that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) is so afraid of the new left-wing Democrats that she has become a figurehead.