Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Blasts Steve King, Says He Risked ‘Pink Eye’ In Drinking From Toilet Fountain
Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had some choice words late Wednesday for fellow lawmaker Republican Rep. Steve King after the Iowa Republican shared video on Twitter of himself drinking water from a toilet-water fountain hybrid at a migrant detention facility along the southern border.
“There is a genre of videos where GOP House members – who clearly didn’t read sworn testimony that detention sinks were broken – filming themselves drinking out of toilet sinks,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, attaching a Twitter Moment about King’s video. “They’re so anti-immigrant they risk pink eye to show off that they didn’t do the reading #CloseTheCamps.”
King said at a town hall event this week that he drank from one of the toilet-water fountain hybrid at a migrant detention facility along the southern border, per a report from The New York Daily News. At the town hall, King said he didn’t release the video when he initially took it because he thought that the topic of discussion needed to be left in the past.
“I actually went into that cell where it was reported that they were advised they had to drink out of the toilet,” King said at a town hall he held in Eagle Grove, Iowa. “I took a drink out of there and it was actually pretty good.”
The Iowa Republican claimed that the members of congress were misinformed my the detained migrants due to what he chalked up to a “language barrier” between the lawmakers and the migrants.
The claim was initially made by Ocasio-Cortez earlier this summer, according to Business Insider, who said that the facilities were committing acts of “psychological warfare” against the detained migrants. The New York Democrat claimed the facilities were in poor condition and that migrants were directed to drink water from toilets when the water fountains attached to them were malfunctioning.
There are politicians who aspire to be public servants, and there are politicians who spend their careers nursing a bottomless need for attention. https://t.co/lf6XtHA1BI
— Connie Schultz (@ConnieSchultz) September 5, 2019
According to the report from Business Insider, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol disputed the allegations. In the video that King tweeted, he said that Ocasio-Cortez was not “objectively honest” and claimed that her accusations were “#FakeNews.”
Following the claim he made at this town hall event, King took to his Twitter to share video of himself drinking from the water fountain, which is on top of a toilet.
According to The New York Daily News, while the toilet-water fountain hybrid has been used at U.S. Border Patrol facilities as well as jails in the United States for some time, the number of individuals being forced to share one unit is likely much higher than ever before.
