Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Calls Trump A Nematode – A Parasitic Worm – On ‘Late Night With Seth Meyers’
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez invoked her extensive knowledge of microbiology on an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers Thursday night, comparing Donald Trump to a parasitic worm known as a nematode.
As Newsweek reports, the freshman congresswoman stopped by the late-night talk show, and the subject of her fascination with science and microbiology came up. Specifically, Ocasio-Cortez has studied the effects of antioxidants on a certain species of nematode. Nematodes are parasitic worms, many of which are microscopic, and others of which can reach as long as 20 feet or more.
And she compared Donald Trump to such a worm.
Specifically, host Meyers started to make a joke suggesting that Ocasio-Cortez and Trump had something in common, facetiously suggesting that both had done extensive research into microbiology. But Alexandria interrupted him.
“Because he’s a nematode?”
In case you were wondering, nematodes are practically everywhere: in plants, in animals, and in soil. You may even have some inside you; approximately 50 percent of all living humans have nematodes in their digestive systems, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Elsewhere in the interview, Ocasio-Cortez responded to criticism against her that she gets from her adversaries, particularly those at Fox News.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Fox News coverage: "Why are so many grown men" obsessed with me? https://t.co/VjM1O0s5or pic.twitter.com/qpjLW9Vpdk
— The Hill (@thehill) March 22, 2019
One such criticism was leveled by former Arkansas governor and former Fox & Friends host Mike Huckabee, who suggested that she was a “Manchurian candidate.” For those not familiar, he was referring to a 1959 book (which was itself made into a 1962 movie) about an American brainwashed by the Soviets to be used as a tool to effect a communist takeover of the U.S. Huckabee was apparently referencing Ocasio-Cortez’s advocacy for socialist policies and trying to equate them with communism.
Ocasio-Cortez brushed off the suggestion.
“I’m not a Manchurian Candidate, but I do have amazing staff—and in no part thanks to the fact that we pay a living wage in our office…”
In fact, Alexandria devoted quite a bit of the interview to deconstructing Fox News and their treatment of her.
For example, as The Hill reports, Fox News host Laura Ingraham has made fun of how she (Ocasio-Cortez) pronounces her own name with a Puerto Rican accent, something Ingraham calls “the Latina thing.” Other Fox News hosts have “gleefully” cracked jokes about her personal finances.
But it’s not Fox News’ criticisms that bother her so much as the fact that they’re taken seriously by some of her colleagues in Congress.
“It is funny because one of the side effects of this Fox News lunacy is that other actual members of Congress believe it and see it uncritically.”
You can watch Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s interview with Seth Meyers on YouTube.