Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) joked throughout a joint look at a Utah rally on Sunday that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was his daughter, praising the progressive lawmaker and highlighting her background.
“Now I want to say a word about my daughter,” Sanders mentioned, placing his hand on Ocasio-Cortez’s shoulder.
The New York congresswoman and the gang laughed.
“No,” Sanders mentioned, shifting to a severe tone. “I want to say a word about Alexandria and why, why what she’s doing is so important.”
Sanders proceeded to inform the story of Ocasio-Cortez’s entrance into politics, noting the high-profile Democrat was a waitress six years in the past and determined to tackle an institution Democrat in Congress. Earlier than working for workplace, Ocasio-Cortez was a neighborhood organizer for Sanders’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign.
“She looked around her, and she saw a society that was fundamentally unjust and, in many ways, ugly to the people in the community in which she lived in New York City,” Sanders mentioned.
“She stood up and took on one of the most powerful people in the House of Representatives, and she started with almost no money against the guy who had unlimited funds, and she beat him,” he added.
Ocasio-Cortez additionally remarked on her background as a waitress and pushed again in opposition to Republicans who say she was unqualified to serve in Congress.
“But the fact is, many of us are far more qualified to know what real life is actually like than any of them ever will,” she mentioned on the Utah rally. “And I tell this story not because it is special, but because of how common and normal it is.”
“While the details may differ, so many of us know what it feels like for life to be one bad day, one bad piece of news, one major setback from everything feeling like it’s going to fall apart, and we don’t have to live like this any more Utah,” she continued, advocating for residing wages, secure housing and assured well being care.
“Oligarchy or democracy,” she added. “And we are here today because we choose democracy.”
The remarks got here throughout a cease on Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s “Fight Oligarchy” tour, throughout which the progressive duo has attracted hundreds of attendees at rallies held in battleground states.
Sanders urged folks within the viewers on the Utah rally on Sunday to observe in Ocasio-Cortez’s footsteps and “go outside of their comfort zone.”
Sanders has heaped reward on Ocasio-Cortez previously, together with just lately calling her “extraordinary” in an ABC Information interview.
“I am so impressed by her work in Congress and her, just, she inspires young people all over the country,” Sanders mentioned in regards to the younger progressive congresswoman, within the interview final month.
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