OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made headlines again this week, but it wasn’t because of anything she did for a change.
On Wednesday, a noted conservative provocateur nearly provoked a physical response from the New York Democrat as he harassed her while she entered the U.S. Capitol Building.
The provocateur, Alex Stein, recorded himself as he catcalled the congresswoman and posted the video on his Twitter account. Ocasio-Cortez later shared Stein’s video, calling it a “deeply disgusting incident.”
“I was actually walking over to deck him because if no one will protect us then I’ll do it myself but I needed to catch a vote more than a case today,” the Bronx Democratic socialist tweeted after the incident.
“It’s just a bummer to work in an institution that openly allowed this, but talking about it only invites more. Just really sad,” she added.
Here is a video he posted of the incident. I was actually walking over to deck him because if no one will protect us then I’ll do it myself but I needed to catch a vote more than a case today pic.twitter.com/RdwCNBDIBb
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 14, 2022
In the video, Stein aimed a number of overtly crude remarks at Ocasio-Cortez.
When Stein shouted, “Look at that booty on AOC,” the congresswoman reacted by walking toward him before an aide stepped in between them.
The lefty lawmaker then held two fingers up in the form of a peace sign before walking back up the Capitol steps as Stein shouted, “Whooo. I love it AOC. Hot, hot, hot like a tamale.”
Some Twitter users, including former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, mocked ‘AOC’ for complaining.
Ellis, for instance, responded by tweeting a screenshot of a tweet in which Ocasio-Cortez wrote on the platform in December 2020: “The who point of protesting is to make ppl [people] uncomfortable.”
“This you?” Ellis asked.
This you? pic.twitter.com/HrCeB2kvXt
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) July 14, 2022
Stein reportedly attempted to engage several lawmakers outside the Capitol on Wednesday, according to other reports.
The Washington Examiner noted further:
In another video posted by the provocateur on Twitter, he asked Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) if he thinks Hunter Biden “has good taste in prostitutes.” In the video, a puzzled-looking Bowman threw his hands up in the air after the question and walked off shaking his head.
Ocasio-Cortez made headlines again last week, but for a different reason.
She wore a dress to a swanky New York City affair last year that said “Tax the Rich.”
Only, she appears to now have a tax problem of her own — as in, an unpaid tax bill stemming from five years ago. And now, according to a Thursday report, fines on that unpaid tax levy are piling up.
“New York state filed a tax warrant against Brook Avenue Press, a children-focused publishing house Ocasio-Cortez founded in 2012, on July 6, 2017, to collect $1,618 in unpaid corporate taxes. Ocasio-Cortez has yet to pay a penny of her overdue corporate taxes, causing the current balance of the tax warrant to swell by 52% to $2,461 as of Wednesday afternoon,” the Washington Examiner noted in a separate report.
“New York dissolved Brook Avenue Press in October 2016, state corporate records show. The state filed its tax warrant against Ocasio-Cortez’s defunct business about two months after she launched her successful primary campaign against former Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY),” the Examiner added.
The Bronx County Clerk’s Office confirmed the tax warrant against Ocasio-Cortez’s business is still open, reports added.
AOC argued in 2019 that she was unaware of the tax warrant against her former business until after she was sworn into Congress in January of that year.
Ocasio-Cortez had gone from saying she intended to repay her delinquent corporate tax bill to then claiming the warrant was issued “in error” and since she has begun to dispute the assessment with the Bronx County Clerk’s Office.
“The congresswoman is still in the process of contesting the tax warrant. The business has been closed for several years now, and so we believe that the state Tax Department has continued to collect the franchise tax in error,” Ocasio-Cortez spokeswoman Lauren Hitt told the New York Post in May 2020.
“As anyone who’s tried to contest a tax bill in error knows, it takes time,” Hitt said.
