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Ocasio-Cortez Tells NPR One Thing, Tells Chuck Todd The Opposite — Just Hours Later

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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Freshman Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez contradicted herself Thursday, telling NPR one thing in the morning and saying the exact opposite to NBC’s Chuck Todd just hours later.

The dramatic flip-flop was caught by Grabien founder Tom S. Elliott, who spliced the two segments together in a tweet, noting that they had occurred fewer than 12 hours apart.

In the first segment, which aired Thursday morning on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Ocasio-Cortez was touting her proposed Green New Deal and explaining why the government had to take charge. The private sector, she argued, had failed to step up. (RELATED: Ocasio-Cortez Admits She’s A Radical, Calls For 70 Percent Tax Rate)

When host Steve Inskeep asked whether she was ready to say that her plan would necessitate “massive government intervention,” she replied, “It does. It does. Yeah, I have no problem saying that. Why? Because we have tried their approach for 40 years.”

By Thursday evening, however, the congresswoman appeared to have changed her tune. Speaking with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press,” Ocasio-Cortez explained how she planned to sell her Green New Deal to the “rank and file” taxpayers — and argued that the right “mischaracterizes” what she intends to do.

WATCH:

“There is a couple things,” she began. “One is that I think one way that the right does try to mischaracterize what we’re doing is as though it is like some kind of massive government takeover. Well, obviously what we’re trying to do, obviously it’s not that because what we’re trying to do is release the investments from the federal government to mobilize those resources across the country.”

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