Ocasio-Cortez on Democrats’ wins: Voters realize Trump is ‘handmaiden to billionaires’
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said the Democratic victories in Tuesday’s elections should send a message to President Trump.
The victories are “not just a message about Democrats” but “about our entire country,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s Abby Phillip late Tuesday.
“I think that Americans are appalled by what they are seeing coming out of this administration,” she told Phillip. “They are appalled by the cowardice of Congress, by these Republican majorities in the House and in the Senate. I think that they are — they see Donald Trump now for who he is, which is a handmaiden to billionaires and a handmaiden to corporate interests that are making working class life impossible in America.”
Ocasio-Cortez said that voters “want to send fighters in every single pocket of this country to fight for working people, to make life affordable and safe for all.”
The Democratic representative added that New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s (D) election win was “impressive,” not only for defeating Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa but also “the old guard of the Democratic Party” in former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (I).
“He was fighting a war on two fronts and not just one,” she said. “And he still won resoundingly. And I think the message that that sends is that the Democratic Party cannot last much longer by denying the future, by trying to undercut our young, by trying to undercut a next generation of diverse and upcoming Democrats that have the party’s — the actual party, that are actual electorate and voter support.”
Mamdani’s fellow democratic socialists Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) appeared with the mayor-elect onstage during his campaign victory rally in Brooklyn.
Sanders, in a post on the social media platform X, said Mamdani pulled off one of the great political upsets in modern American history.”
“Yes. We CAN create a government that represents working people and not the 1%. I look forward to working with Zohran as he builds a city that works for all,” Sanders added.
Mamdani won with 50.6 percent of the vote, or 1,036,051 ballots cast, while Cuomo received 41.7 percent, or 854,995 votes. Sliwa received 146,137 votes, or 7.1 percent of the electorate.
Democrats on Tuesday also won races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia.