Mark Steyn, guest-hosting Thursday for Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, ridiculed New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for claiming that what we have in America ‘is fascism.’
After airing a quote from a recent rally — where Ocasio-Cortez claimed that the United States was not “an advanced society” and agreed with a member of the audience that America was already being subjected to fascist control — Steyn asked his guest, The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson, whether she had any understanding of what fascism actually was.
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“Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to have absolute control over the U.S. economy, health care sector, and a lot more. So far, it hasn’t happened, and according to AOC recently, that failure means that America must be a backward fascist country,” Steyn began by way of introduction.
“It is fascism, what we have. What we are evolving into, as well,” Ocasio-Cortez said in the clip.
Steyn then turned to his guest, asking, “John, do you think AOC actually knows what fascism is?” (RELATED: Tucker Carlson And Mark Steyn Mock Biden’s ‘No Malarkey’ Tour, Suggest Alternate Slogans)
“No, it’s just a scare word,” Davidson replied. “It just means, as you said, the government, the Democratic Party, doesn’t have control over health care, education, the major industries, the green New Deal is never going to happen — that’s all it means. It doesn’t have anything to do with actual fascism.”
Steyn went on to argue that a sitting member of Congress referring to the United States as “fascist” represented a dramatic shift in American political discourse. “She also said, which I thought was actually as striking, that ‘Americans shouldn’t settle for just being 10% better than garbage.’ Which, again, would be — just a few years ago, would have been an unusual thing for anybody to say about the country they represent in the national legislature,” he added.
Davidson jumped back in, saying that Ocasio-Cortez’s comments were representative of the left’s “economic illiteracy” and their insistence that some people don’t have money because others are simply hoarding wealth. “She complained about America not being an advanced society, because it doesn’t matter how much gold you amass, you know, if people aren’t taken care of,” he explained. “It was a perfect illustration of the economic illiteracy of the left — the economic and historical illiteracy of the left. Nobody is amassing gold. GDP doesn’t stand for gold deposit pile. That’s not how the economy works.”
“Scrooge McDuck,” Steyn laughed.
“Scrooge McDuck isn’t swimming around in piles of gold,” Davidson agreed. “Wealthy Americans are investing it. They are creating jobs. That is why wages are going up, that is why unemployment is down. That is how the real world works. These people are out to lunch on the stuff.”
