The chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Sunday offered blunt advice to Republican lawmakers hoping to become the conservative answer to his liberal firebrand boss on social media.
“I mean, you know, the same advice that she would probably give is like, be yourself and try to stay above the fray. Like, you should actually talk about policy, actually try to have a real debate. And that’s what she’s trying to do. She’s just taking big ideas, really bold ideas, things that are sweeping ideas and putting them at the forefront. So, if you don’t have the content, social media’s not going to help you,” Saikat Chakrabarti said during an interview with CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who has more than 2.75 million followers on Twitter, routinely calls out her critics on the platform and also engages supporters while streaming on Instagram.
Ocasio-Cortez’s use of social media to reach out to her constituents and the broader Democratic base has been praised by political pundits. The 29-year-old, who last year became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, recently led part of a workshop for Democratic lawmakers on how to leverage different online platforms to their advantage.
Chakrabarti’s comments were in response to a question about Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. The 36-year-old Gaetz, who is also a frequent tweeter, told Politico last week he aspired to be “the conservative AOC,” referring to Ocasio-Cortez by her popular nickname.
“I can’t dance for shit,” Gaetz told the outlet. The two-term lawmaker was alluding to a 2010 video of the freshman congresswoman, recorded when she was a Boston College student, re-enacting a dance montage from the 1985 film, “Breakfast Club,” which went viral after surfacing in January.
