Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) took to the House floor on Wednesday morning to respond to the vulgar, sexist encounter she had with Rep. Ted Yoho (FL-03) and Rep. Roger Williams (TX-25) on Monday. Ocasio-Cortez was on her way to vote, walking up the steps of the U.S. Capitol when the pair of Republican congressmen angrily confronted her. According to AOC, Yoho was angrily wagging his finger in her face and as he walked away, a reporter from The Hill overheard him exclaim “Fucking bitch.”
The reporter’s account of the encounter sparked a firestorm and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and others demanded Yoho apologize for his remarks, which seemed to be in violation of the House Ethics rules. So the first order of business on Tuesday was Yoho issuing an apology on the House floor. Except it wasn’t an apology at all. He denied using the vulgar slur and then used the fact he has a wife and daughter to deflect from his poor behavior. While many media outlets nationwide ran with “Yoho apologizes” headlines, AOC rightly pointed out that he never apologized. He never said her name. He never took responsibility for his language. He apologized for “their misunderstanding”, claiming the reporter’s misunderstood his comment. And then he had the gall to say he would not apologize for “his passion” or for “loving his God.” Nobody asked him to apologize for his religion, they asked him to apologize for being a sexist, violent jerk. And while he didn’t raise his hand to strike her, a much larger man getting in your face, angrily yelling and wagging his finger in front of your face is very much a physical aggression.
With that, AOC stood on the floor to address the controversy in one of her most passionate speeches to-date. She said she intended to let the fury die down and she would move on, but then Yoho refused to take responsibility for his actions and it upset her he brought his own wife and daughter into the controversy, using them as a shield for his behavior. She noted that she is two years younger than Ted Yoho’s youngest daughter and that “she is someone’s daughter too.” She began to choke up a bit as she pondered how her own father, who is deceased, might react to seeing the hateful treatment she is frequently on the receiving of, from just using the subway, to working as a bartender and now in the United States House of Representatives. She said she could not let this go because “this is not new. It is something women face every single day. It is a cultural. Continue reading.