Politics

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Misquotes The Constitution

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Amber Athey Podcast Columnist
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Democratic Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez misquoted the U.S. Constitution while threatening to run for president on Thursday.

According to a recap in Politico’s Playbook, Ocasio-Cortez was doing a Politico photoshoot at Harvard University when she and a photographer joked about a potential presidential run.

“You can’t even run for president for another six years,” the photographer said, pointing out that Ocasio-Cortez just turned 29 years old.

Ocasio-Cortez then claimed that the Constitution only places a presidential age limit on men and threatened to run for president if Republicans don’t pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

“No, not for a long time. Thank God,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Although we’ve been joking that because the Equal Rights Amendment hasn’t been passed yet, the Constitution technically says he cannot run unless he’s 35. … So what we’ll do is we’ll force the Republican Party to pass the Equal Rights Amendment by threatening to run for president.”

US Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) walks up to participate in drawing a lottery number for her new office on Capitol Hill November 30, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

US Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) walks up to participate in drawing a lottery number for her new office on Capitol Hill November 30, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

“That is awesome,” the photographer reportedly replied. “All the people who say a literal interpretation of the Constitution is the only thing you should be paying attention to.”

“I will keep vigilance,” Ocasio-Cortez promised.

As Playbook notes, the Constitution does not say “he” cannot run — it says “any person.”

The relevant clause of the Constitution, Article II Section I, reads as follows:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

Ocasio-Cortez has become infamous for her many gaffes about government and politics. On Friday, there were calls for a House Ethics investigation after the congresswoman-elect threatened to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. over a meme mocking socialism.

In November, Ocasio-Cortez mixed up the three branches of government, asserting that, “If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress, uh, rather, all three chambers of government — the presidency, the Senate and the House — in 2020.”

The congresswoman-elect accused conservatives at the time of “drooling” over footage of her “waiting to chop up word slips.”

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