AOC Appears To Think Roosevelt, Not Truman, Nuked Japan [Watch]
If there’s any quirk of politics I’d give anything to stop, it’s the idea of “town hall meetings” on basic cable news channels.
Yes, I understand that the term has come to represent any event where a politician or other figures take questions from constituents — even if they aren’t their constituents — but the idea that these highly scripted events represent anything like the meetings they were designed to emulate is an utter absurdity.
In the case of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s MSNBC town hall meeting on Friday, however, I’m not entirely complaining. It’s days later and people are still finding amazing nuggets of amusement from the architect of the Green New Deal — including more evidence that the congresswoman from New York doesn’t quite comprehend history.
At one point, in fact, Ocasio-Cortez said Republicans passed presidential term limits to get rid of Franklin Delano Roosevelt because he was so popular. There were a few problems with this, of course:
The 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms or 10 years in office, passed only because Democrats joined Republicans, and it did so after FDR’s corpse had long gone cold.
So here’s Ocasio-Cortez, explaining her version of American history.
“When our party was boldest — the time of the New Deal, the Great Society, the Civil Rights Act — we had and carried supermajorities in the House, in the Senate,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“We carried the presidency,” she continued. “They had to amend the Constitution of the United States to make sure Roosevelt did not get reelected.”
According to AOC, Congress amended the Constitution to prevent FDR from being re-elected:
“They had to amend the Constitution of the United States to make sure Roosevelt dd not get reelected.”
(Reminder, FDR died in office in 1945; the 22nd Amendment came in 1947) pic.twitter.com/DImHj0caVy
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 31, 2019
This is your new hero, Democrats. Feeling buyer’s remorse yet?
Now, I know what everyone is harping on here, and I actually don’t think it’s the worst bit of nonsense in this window into the thought processes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Rather, I think it’s the internal logic.
When the Democrats were “boldest,” they had super-majorities and the presidency — so what these supermajorities did was pass the 22nd Amendment to get rid of the president who had led them to this electoral success and then got the states, the vast majority of which had voted for FDR in every presidential election, to ratify it.
Of course, this isn’t actually what happened. First, Roosevelt died in 1945, leaving the presidency to Harry S. Truman. Clearly, Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t grasp that, which brings up the question what else about that crucial period of American and world history she might be ignorant of.
In the Ocasio-Cortez universe, apparently, FDR was the commander in chief when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II. In fact, in AOC’s world, FDR must have been president a good two full years after he was actually dead.
(It kind of makes one wonder just when and how she thinks FDR actually died — assuming she knows he’s dead at all. When dealing with such historical ignorance, the possibilities are endless.)
In the 1946 midterm elections, the American public’s unhappiness with the Democrats led to the Republicans regaining both chambers for the first time since 1928. However, they certainly didn’t have the supermajority needed to get a two-thirds vote on the 22nd Amendment.
But that wasn’t really a problem. When the amendment passed the House of Representatives, it did so by a 285-121 margin, bolstered by the support of 47 Democrats. In the Senate, it passed 59-23, 16 Democrats signing on to give the amendment the two-thirds majority it needed. It was eventually ratified in 1951, six years after FDR died.
And it’s worth noting that at the time, the president was Truman, the true-blue Democrat from Missouri who succeeded Roosevelt in office. Does Ocasio-Cortez even know “Give ‘Em Hell” Harry ever held the White House at all?
In the real world of American history, of course, the supermajorities Democrats had supposedly accumulated through “bold” behavior didn’t exist, but the Democrats did join with the Republicans to ensure that the presidency was limited to two terms or 10 years.
Furthermore, unless Ocasio-Cortez is from an alternate timeline where FDR was kept in office via “Weekend at Bernie’s” machinations, the amendment had nothing to do with turning Roosevelt out of office.
And yet, notice nobody at the town hall meeting pointed out her error. You just hear an “mmm-hmm” in assent during the clip, possibly from host Chris Hayes.
Either his grasp of history is just as poor or he just didn’t want to undermine a Democrat fresh face doing her fresh face thing.
Not that this was the only thing wrong with this silly town hall debacle, including a part where she said her supporters aren’t “calling anybody names,” according to the Washington Examiner, and then, seconds later, made the claim that:
“People say Tea Party of the left, and I find this phrase very interesting. The phrasing is very interesting because the grounding of the Tea Party was xenophobia, the underpinnings of white supremacy.”
After no Senate Dems vote for the Green New Deal this past week, Rep. Ocaiso-Cortez says “And first of all of, you know, we wave a magic wand and we passed the Green New Deal resolution tomorrow, what happens? Nothing because it’s a resolution. pic.twitter.com/8gCUTAAYvZ
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) March 30, 2019
At least one could watch that and assume that you were dealing with someone who knew basic facts of American history — like that FDR was dead when the 22nd Amendment was passed.
No such luck with the other clip, which shows she either believed that Roosevelt survived the war or that a Democrat-controlled Congress passed the amendment before the president’s death in 1945 to turn their own leader out.
In short, perhaps I could come to love town halls — at least if they’re as chuckle-heavy as this.
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