GOP’s Crenshaw Would Debate Ocasio-Cortez: I’d Ask Questions ‘You Wish Journalists Would Ask’

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said Thursday that if he were to debate fellow freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) he would “ask her the questions that you wish journalists would ask her.”

“I think the proper way to even address someone like Alexandria is to simply ask her the questions that you wish journalists would ask her,” Crenshaw said in an interview with Turning Point USA, a conservative activist group, at a Student Activism Summit in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday.   Crenshaw also pushed back against Ocasio-Cortez, calling her ideas radical.

“When you’re throwing out such radical ideas, asking for a little bit of explanation is probably the best way to debate them because there is no explanation,” Crenshaw said. “These are not well thought out ideas. I don’t like being hyperbolic in my language, but they’re dangerous. They’re dangerous ideas.”

“You want to help the poor? This will do the opposite because we’ll have less jobs. A diminishing economy based on the policies you want to put in place hurts the poor,” said the former Navy SEAL and Purple Heart recipient.

“Destroying an entire energy industry, that hurts the working class. That hurts my family in particular. It hurts my district. And it hurts everybody who wants to heat and cool their homes. These things have consequences and you have to think through those issues,” he said.

Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment from The Hill.

Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described democratic socialist, has generated more media attention than most members of Congress just two weeks into her first term.

The 29-year-old former bartender has backed a progressive agenda, floating the idea of setting a 70 percent marginal tax rate on income above $10 million, while backing “Medicare for all” and a New Green Deal to address climate change.

Ocasio-Cortez became a media sensation following her stunning primary upset of 10-term Rep. Joseph Crowley in New York’s 14th District. Most recently, she was featured on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Jan. 6.

Ocasio-Cortez, who has more than 2.18 million Twitter followers, surpassed Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in followers earlier this month.

Source: The Hill