Ocasio-Cortez takes a page from Trump playbook, spending first days in government attacking the press

“[I]t looks like @PolitiFact has fact-checked Sarah Huckabee Sanders and myself the same amount of times: 6,” Ocasio-Cortez posted. “She’s been serving for almost 2 years. I’ve served 4 days. Why is she fact-checked so little? Is she adhering to some standard we don’t know about?”

Five out of Politifact’s six fact checks on the New York congresswoman found her making false statements. One statement about unemployment being low due to “everyone” having two jobs and working 60-80 hours per week was rated “pants on fire.” Politicifact hasn’t published a fact check on Ocasio-Cortez since Dec. 3, when it rated her tweet saying the scale of Pentagon waste could largely cover the federal tab for a hypothetical “Medicare for all” as “false.”

She also went after the Washington Post for her inaccurate claims on military spending: “Why did @washingtonpost give my confusing tweet on military accounting offsets the same ‘Pinocchios’ as Trump’s flat denial of how many Americans died in Puerto Rico?” she tweeted on Monday.

The Washington Post hasn’t been soft in its criticisms against the White House. By its own count, Trump told more than 7,600 lies, false statements, and misleading claims in his presidency by the end of 2018, averaging 15 erroneous claims a day.

Ocasio-Cortez often suggests funneling money out of the Department of Defense to pay for domestic programs and entitlements. However, there’s little evidence to suggest gutting military funding, even dramatically, could secure the funds to put a significant dent in the liberal wishlist.

On “60 Minutes,” when asked how she could pay for her agenda, she rebutted, “No one asked how we’re gonna pay for Space Force,” despite funding for Trump’s proposed sixth branch of the military being a top concern within Congress and the DOD.

Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter game isn’t as bullish as Trump’s, nor is it riddled with the same volume of falsehoods and below-the-belt punches. Criticizing the media with precision and calling them the “enemy of the people” are two separate universes of attacks.

However, with the bulk of the New York lawmaker’s Twitter feed lambasting the press the past few days, it sets her up to be the liberal pit bull to the press in a climate where the Left also has its grievances against traditional media and is turning to partisan outlets such as Crooked Media and the Young Turks, which often advocate for left-wing causes.

In her tweetstorm, Ocasio-Cortez suggests she should get credit for telling the truth when she does.

“I say true things all the time – I’d hope most do. When does Politifact choose to rate true statements?” she said.

On Monday she blasted CNN commentator Chris Cillizza for not including multiple quotes in a single tweet of his:

In Ocasio-Cortez’s multi-tweet barrage on fact checkers, she responded to a tweet saying the nitpicking comes from “male reporters” afraid of her political success. However, in the same hour she showed alleged support for journalists holding Congress accountable. “Fact-checking is critically important. It’s not always fun. But that’s okay! It pushes me to be better,” she tweeted.

Her lashing out against the press came a day after her “60 Minutes” interview, where she said critics are latching onto her falsehoods and inaccuracies.

“I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right,” she told host Anderson Cooper in the interview.