New York U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has received rave reviews for her tough questioning of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen during his Wednesday testimony in front of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, according to Newsweek .
Ocasio-Cortez, who has already shown in her brief stint as a congresswoman that she doesn’t shy away from asking the tough questions, was on the panel questioning Michael Cohen about Donald Trump’s presidential conduct. Cohen made a series of explosive revelations about the president and went on to call him a “racist” and a “con man” who participated in alleged criminal activity during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
Taking her cue from some of the earlier questions asked by other lawmakers, Ocasio-Cortez asked Cohen about documents pertaining to American Media’s hush money “catch-and-kill” practice. She also persisted in knowing whether or not Trump had ever inflated or deflated his assets for financial and tax benefits, to which Cohen answered in the affirmative.
Ocasio-Cortez’s uncompromising style of questioning has won her a ton of followers. Shortly after the first day of Cohen’s testimony drew to a close, computer scientist Matt Blaze praised her on Twitter .
“Are we sure @AOC is a former bartender and not a former prosecutor? That was a pretty amazing line of questions today,” Blaze wrote.
I agree with this. @AOC asked incisive questions of Cohen on the tax and legal implications of how Trump values his properties. Real news. https://t.co/XcCUW7bfPG
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) February 28, 2019
While questioning Michael Cohen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laid out groundwork to get a hold of President Trump’s elusive tax records https://t.co/4McXejykRV pic.twitter.com/5soc3mSODf
— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 28, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez, displaying her characteristic sense of humor, said that years of waiting on tables had honed her “BS detector.”
“Thanks! Bartending + waitressing (especially in NYC) means you talk to 1000s of people over the years. Forces you to get great at reading people + hones a razor-sharp BS detector.
“Just goes to show that what some consider to be ‘unskilled labor’ can actually be anything but [winking emoji].”
Meanwhile, Trump’s administration seems to be struggling with the optics of Cohen’s testimony after he made remarkable revelations. Trump’s former attorney alleged that the president had lied about not having any knowledge about the Trump Tower meeting where a Russian agent promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. As previously reported, it was attended by Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, oldest son Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Cohen also revealed that Donald Trump knew about WikiLeaks publishing Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails in advance. Trump ally Roger Stone has already been indicted by Robert Mueller for lying about his contact with WikiLeaks. Apart from these fairly serious allegations, Cohen revealed elements about Trump’s personality, testifying that he had once told him that black people were “too stupid” to vote for him.
