Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s campaign responded Tuesday to a social media picture that shows a group of boys at political event in Kentucky while they jokingly kiss and choke a cardboard cutout of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez first responded to the picture in a tweet she later deleted, which read, “Here’s the close up, in case you’re having trouble recognizing them in the photo they posted to social media. Look forward to hearing your update on these #TeamMitch values!”
In a subsequent tweet that was not deleted, the New York Democrat asked, “are you paying for young men to practice groping & choking members of Congress w/ your payroll, or is this just the standard culture of #TeamMitch?”
Hey @senatemajldr – these young men look like they work for you.
Just wanted to clarify: are you paying for young men to practice groping & choking members of Congress w/ your payroll, or is this just the standard culture of #TeamMitch?
Thanks. https://t.co/ysRJuwonUx
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 6, 2019
Making clear that the Kentucky Republican did not support the crude behavior by the high schoolers, campaign manager Kevin Golden said that “Team Mitch in no way condones any aggressive, suggestive, or demeaning act toward cardboard cut outs of any gender in a manner similar to what we saw from President Obama’s speechwriting staff several years ago.”
Golden also made it clear the teenagers are not part of the campaign.
That swipe by the McConnell campaign was aimed at President Barack Obama’s speechwriter, Jon Favreau who at age 27 was pictured at a party in 2008, with another member of the Obama campaign, posing with a cardboard cutout of Obama’s rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton.
In the photo, the man wearing an “Obama Staff” t-shirt pretended to kiss the Clinton cutout while mockingly pouring beer into the cutout’s mouth, while Favreau grinned for the camera and groped the Clinton cutout’s chest with his right hand. Favreau apologized to Clinton and her Senate office responded to the seemingly sexist incident in a joking manner, saying, “Senator Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon’s obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application.”
Favreau emerged from the incident politically unscathed and went on to make $172,000 per year as Obama’s White House director of speechwriting during his first term. Favreau spent Obama’s second term as a founder of Fenway Strategies with former Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor, and in 2016 Favreau founded Crooked Media along with Vietor and former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett. Favreau, Vietor, and Lovett also co-host the wildly popular progressive podcast “Pod Save America.”
The photo that was shared by Ocasio-Cortez and many others on social media also appeared to have been edited. The caption on the Instagram post reads, “break me off a piece of that,” but other versions of the post have the caption, “break me off a piece of that Fancy Farm.”
Fancy Farm, Kentucky was the location of the St. Jerome Catholic Church’s annual political picnic, which is seen as the official start of campaign season in the state.
