Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tripled down on her critique of billionaires Friday, claiming that the American Revolution was fought against the “billionaires of their time.”
“I want to talk about how this is in the heritage of our country, because America was founded… you look at Thomas Jefferson writing to Madison in revolt of British aristocracy,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. “The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time. And we are declaring independence from such an extreme marriage of wealth and power and the state that the voices of everyday people did not exist.”
Ocasio-Cortez was responding to criticism she received for her comments arguing billionaires didn’t “earn” their fortunes and likely built their businesses on “abuse.”
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“You can’t earn a billion dollars,” Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday. “You can get market power. You can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth. But you can’t earn that, right? And so you have to create a myth… you have to create a myth of earning it.”
Regarding the backlash, Ocasio-Cortez accused critics of pushing a “red herring” by assuming she believes all billionaires are immoral rather than focusing on the “immorality” of income inequality.
“They like to talk about American ethos as though it’s an attack on American values, an attack on our idea of success. And first of all, I mean, call me crazy, but I don’t think that every single American aspires to be a billionaire. I think that our idea of success, they might not object, but I don’t think it’s the universal American ideal,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Ocasio-Cortez’s comments received renewed criticism from conservatives who pointed out that many wealthy citizens, including George Washington, helped lead and finance the American Revolution against the British government, not the aristocracy.
“No, AOC, the American Revolution was NOT ‘against the billionaires of their time.’ It was against a large, distant, overly intrusive government that recognized no limits over its own authority to tax, regulate, and eat out the substance of the citizens it claimed to serve,” Utah Sen. Mike Lee wrote.
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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz commented, “If a 9th grader writes this on her history test, she gets an F. It was literally a revolution against oppressive GOVERNMENT…the very thing @aoc wants to inflict on all of us. And the Revolution was financed by American free enterprise…the ‘billionaires’ of that time.”
“Uh, if George Washington wasn’t the wealthiest man in the colonies he was pretty close,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote.
Fox News Digital reached out to Ocasio-Cortez’s office for comment.
After her original comments on billionaires went viral, Ocasio-Cortez doubled down on her claims in an X post.
“The single largest form of theft in America is wage theft. $50 billion a year are stolen from American workers,” she wrote. “Some people get enraged that I draw attention to this. That’s on them. Let them call me shrill, dumb, inexperienced, girly, uneducated — these folks will say anything to distract from or undercut the truth that working people are getting screwed, and giving people a fair shake means we must have a grown conversation about reigning in abuse of power.”
