President Donald Trump may have just discovered it’s not a good idea to get under Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s skin after he described her as “not bright” during an interview with Fox Business. Because she fired back hours later, telling him to release his university transcript Thursday.
“Let’s make a deal, Mr. President: You release your college transcript, I’ll release mine, and we’ll see who was the better student,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to Trump’s claim that she was a “poor student” in his Thursday morning interview.
Here’s a clip of Trump’s comments, followed by Ocasio-Cortez’s fiery response in which she noted “loser has to fund the Post Office.”
Trump on AOC: “AOC was a poor student … this is not even a smart person, other than she’s got a good line of stuff. I mean, she goes out and she yaps.” pic.twitter.com/usijJRqlqK [1]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2020 [2]
Let’s make a deal, Mr. President:
You release your college transcript, I’ll release mine, and we’ll see who was the better student.
Loser has to fund the Post Office. https://t.co/OXnmJxufIw [3]
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 13, 2020 [4]
Trump has criticized Ocasio-Cortez on other occasions, but this time his remarks were linked to criticism of her political platforms, Newsweek [5] reports. Criticizing women, especially those who are Democrats, is nothing new for Trump, having called vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris a “madwoman” and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “stone-cold crazy” on Thursday.
But he was really in fine form (sarcasm intentional here) on Fox Business.
“AOC was a poor student,” he said. “I mean, I won’t say where she went to school, it doesn’t matter. This is not even a smart person, other than she’s got a good line of stuff. I mean, she goes out there and she yaps.”
Welp, I’m including a bit of information on AOC’s education: She graduated [6] Magna cum Laude from Boston University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations and a minor in economics. As for Trump, Forbes [7] reports he attended Fordham University for two years and then completed his undergraduate degree at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The president has taken legal action through Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney, in the form of threatening letters [8] in order to prevent the high school he attended as well as the two universities from releasing his academic records.
That move was ridiculous because, under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), [9] schools are prohibited from releasing these records without the student’s written permission. Trump and others have repeatedly lied that he “graduated first in his class,” but that’s simply not true. [10]
Since he repeatedly resists releasing his academic records it’s more than a bit nebulous about just how well he did, so I’m going to leave it at that, except to mention Ocasio-Cortez is right to upbraid him for doing whatever he can to destabilize the U.S. postal service. Because that’s what he’s doing. He’s been quite specific about it, saying he’s blocking funding to the agency to shut down [11] mail-in voting.
So okay voters. Do the right thing here and remember that many post offices in the U.S. have vote by mail drop boxes and vote by mail drop off locations, like this one here, in Los Angeles. [12]
If we all do our part we can end the national Trump nightmare.