Greg Gutfeld, a Fox News personality who's a co-host on The Five, used time on the program Tuesday evening to compare New York freshman Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a mirror image of President Donald Trump.
He didn't say they were exactly alike in political ideas, because they probably couldn't be more different. The Fox host said like Trump, Ocasio-Cortez is a political newcomer who's shaken up the political scene, and the pages from their playbooks seem identical.
Ocasio-Cortez, 29, was an unlikely winner in the Democratic primary, defeating longtime Rep. Joseph Crowley, who was a favorite to take over Speaker of the House had he won. Crowley heavily outspent Ocasio-Cortez in the primary, and the New York Times called it "the most significant loss for a Democratic incumbent in more than a decade."
President Trump won a heavyweight Republican primary over 16 opponents, then pulled off the win over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 General Election.
Both Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and President Trump are unfiltered on Twitter and in front of the cameras. Both bucked the trend of traditional politicians, and both are shaking up their parties to the point where they've separated themselves from their typical political packs.
While much hasn't gotten done on Capitol Hill during the partial government shutdown, Ocasio-Cortez has hit the trail and kept her name in the public. On recent TV programs, she has said it's "immoral" to have so many billionaires in a country where teachers have to sell blood to make ends meet, she said climate change will cause the world to end in 12 years and she has challenged her own party on leadership.
To see the segment from Tuesday, you can skip ahed to the 20-minute mark of this video:
After The Five showed video clips of her on climate change and challenging her own Democratic Party, Gutfeld weighed in his opinion on Ocasio-Cortez's course down her new political journey. And he compared her to President Trump along the way.
"She's doing two things right," Gutfeld said of the freshman representative. "She's capitalizing on a fear, which in this case she's talking about climate change. You could say that Donald Trump did the same thing with immigration. … Some say legitimate fear and some say not legitimate. Climate change? Some say legitimate and some say not.
"But she's doing the same thing. And within the climate change argument, she's working on exaggeration and tertiary sources, but so did Donald Trump."
Gutfeld added that, like Trump, Ocasio-Cortez says things off the cuff that may or may not be true, but both say it with conviction to the point their political base holds those words to be true.
"She's also doing something that Donald Trump is doing: saying memorable things, that are direct in her world," Gutfeld said. "They might be completely inaccurate, but directionally true in her world. That's why she gets the applause.
"The world could end in 12 years, obviously that's wrong, but in their heads they're going, "well, her mind she is going in the right direction.""
Gutfeld reminded viewers of how the media and political pundits mocked Trump when he was new on the scene, but how he rose to stardom, just like Ocasio-Cortez is blazing her own path.
"So while we can mock her for all this, we're guilty of what everyone else did with Trump on Morning Joe and CNN, which is laugh, laugh, laugh until you built her up to a certain stature, you can't laugh at her anymore. I think that's why even her peers in the Democratic Party are upset. They dislike her because she's on 60 MInutes, she's on Colbert and she just showed up. That ticks her up.
What does that sound like? It sounds like the Republican Party with Trump. It's becoming an identical mirror."
Ocasio-Cortez has become a social media giant as well, leading all top Democrats in followers and messages, just like President Trump has done on the Republican side.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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