Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Shuts Down Town Hall Heckler Who Called GOP Panelist A ‘Moron’

At a town hall event Friday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) moved quickly to silence a heckler who called her co-panelist, a former GOP lawmaker a “moron,” according to a report in The Hill. Former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-South Carolina) appeared on the panel along with Ocasio-Cortez to discuss AOC’s signature proposed resolution, the Green New Deal, as well as the possibility of passing other progressive legislation in the current political environment.

The audience member catcalling Inglis ironically came about after Inglis made a comment suggesting the left try to be more inclusive when it comes to discussing climate change. Inglis said that rather than taking a combative “mirror image of a Trump rally” on the issue of climate change and scaring off those who might initially disagree, progressives would be better served by trying to bring people into the fold.

“If we have basically the mirror image of a Trump rally on climate change, that we drive all the people away that could come our way and solve this thing now,” Inglis said, with an audible grumbling emerging among audience members and a scattering of “boos.”

“You can’t do it in a single Congress, the entire Green New Deal,” he continued. “Is it possible that we say, climate change…’we’ve got to act now?’ Can we come back maybe to universal basic income a little bit later?”

That’s when an audience member could clearly be heard yelling out “moron!”

“Hey, hey, hey, that’s unacceptable.”

“And that’s the difference between me and Trump,” she then added, turning to Inglis.

Her comment on contrasting herself from President Donald Trump likely has to do with a narrative currently circulating among some on the right that unfavorably compares her to the president, saying that because she is a prolific user of social media and often responds directly to critics and to the press, she is no different than him. For her part, AOC has dismissed these comparisons as “absurd.”

Let’s debate, not debase. ?? https://t.co/QqmRpT92NF

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 30, 2019

The Green New Deal-focused town hall hosted by MSNBC came about in the wake of a Senate vote on the resolution that was hastily arranged by the GOP and dismissed by many on the left as a “sham” vote meant only to embarrass Democrats and create fodder to be used on the campaign trail in 2020.

However, Ocasio-Cortez and others on the left maintain that the only legislators who were embarrassed by the Senate floor debate on the issue were those on the GOP side of the aisle. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) for instance, argued that the Green New Deal wants to completely ban air travel and used imagery of Ronald Reagan on a dinosaur and Luke Skywalker on a tauntaun to ridicule the resolution, as previously reported in The Inquisitr.

“I didn’t expect them to make total fools of themselves,” Ocasio-Cortez told the town hall crowd.