A top House Democratic leader isn’t backing down from a weekend Twitter fight that yielded an extraordinary tweet from on high condemning Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff.
“The tweet speaks for itself,” Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told the Washington Examiner.
The caucus twitter account, @HouseDemocrats, took on Ocasio-Cortez’s top aide, Saikrat Chakrabarti, who tweeted Democratic House member Sharice Davids, a Kansas moderate, votes “to enable a racist system.”
Democratic leaders had already admonished Chakrabarti in front of the entire caucus for going after moderates and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Chakrabarti, 33, a powerful and ultra-progressive influence behind the 29-year-old first-term congresswoman, angered dozens of moderate House Democrats last month during an intra-party battle over border funding.
He attacked centrists on Twitter for backing a bipartisan measure to provide emergency funding.
“They certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown peopled today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s,” Chakrabarti tweeted.
He later attacked Pelosi, a California Democrat, on Twitter, mocking the notion she was a “mastermind.”
On Friday, the @HouseDemocrats account took aim at Chakrabarti over his tweet about Davids, who won her seat by defeating a Republican incumbent Kevin Yoder in 2018.
“Who is this guy and why is he explicitly singling out a Native American woman of color?” the account, controlled by Jeffries, tweeted. “Keep her name out of your mouth.”
Jeffries wouldn’t say whether he personally authored the tweet or even if he sanctioned it at the time.
Jeffries also declined to reveal whether the account would be used to go after other unruly staffers in the future.
“The House Democratic Caucus account will continue to highlight the efforts by members to work on the kitchen table, pocketbook issues that are important to the American people,” Jeffries said.
Jeffries also declined to weigh in on the fate of Chakrabarti. Some Democratic lawmakers want Ocasio-Cortez to fire him.
“That’s a personnel matter,” Jeffries said. “I’ll leave it to her to resolve.”
