Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioned Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday over a photo that emerged online of a group of boys wearing “Team Mitch” shirts and “groping & choking” a cutout of the Democratic representative during an event in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky.
A screenshot of the photo shows the young men holding a life-size cutout of Ocasio-Cortez, one of them trying to kiss it and another one seemingly choking the cutout, with a caption “break me off a piece of that.”
Shortly after the photo emerged, the freshman congresswoman called McConnell out on Twitter.
“Hey @senatemajldr – these young men look like they work for you. Just wanted to clarify: are you paying for young men to practice groping & choking members of Congress w/ your payroll, or is this just the standard culture of #TeamMitch? Thanks,” she wrote.
CBS News learned from McConnell’s campaign manager Kevin Golden that the teens are high schoolers, who are not part of the campaign staff. Golden criticized such behavior but didn’t fail to point to a similar incident from 2008 when a former Obama speechwriter was seen groping a Hilary Clinton cutout.
“Team Mitch in no way condones any aggressive, suggestive, or demeaning act toward life-sized cardboard cutouts of any gender in a manner similar to what we saw from President Obama’s speechwriting staff several years ago,” he said in a statement.
Golden then seemed to aim his criticism at far-left critics like the congresswoman, saying “the far-left and the media look for every possible way to demonize, stereotype, and publicly castigate every young person who dares to get involved with Republican politics.”
Ocasio-Cortez did not stop there, adding in a separate tweet, “Boys will be boys. Is that also the reason why you’ve chosen to block the Violence Against Women act too, @senatemajldr?”
The Senate majority leader also recently found himself in the crosshairs when his campaign shared an image of tombstones with the names of some of his opponents, including one-time Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland and senatorial candidate Amy McGath. The caption read “The Grim Reaper of Socialism,” referring to McConnell.
“Hours after the El Paso shooting, Mitch McConnell proudly tweeted this photo,” McGath wrote. “I find it so troubling that our politics have become so nasty and personal that the Senate Majority Leader thinks it’s appropriate to use imagery of the death of a political opponent (me) as messaging.”
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