Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez has spent the days following Wednesday’s attempted coup criticizing Senator Josh Hawley for whining about losing a book deal after helping incite the violence. She’s also supported a second impeachment of Donald Trump if he does not resign, which looks increasingly unlikely as the days pass. But on Sunday she called out Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Twitter for complaining about Twitter follower counts and apparent censorship, noting first and foremost that she’s likely telling on herself in the process.
Conservatives have spent the days following the coup attempt complaining online about dwindling follower counts on social media and sites like Parler getting booted from mobile app stores due to a lack of moderation of hate speech.
On Sunday, AOC retweeted a Huckabee Sanders tweet about her plummeting Twitter follower count and pointed out several things, starting with the fact that those followers disappearing is likely because countless QAnon and conspiracy-filled accounts, like Donald Trump’s, have been suspended.
Five people died and we just learned another officer lost his life.
Yet GOP’s central focus right now are their Twitter counts. I bet many don’t even follow their community’s COVID numbers as closely.
This narcissism and nihilism succinctly captures the “leadership” they offer.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 10, 2021
More than that, though, she tried to point out that Republicans seem far more concerned about an intentionally misleading first amendment argument than actual threats of harm to the nation. Not to mention there’s still an ongoing pandemic that’s killing record numbers of people in the United States every day.
Ocasio-Cortez was far from the only person to call out Sanders and other conservatives tracking follower counts more closely than coronavirus infections, hospitalizations or vaccinations over the weekend, but few politicians can do so more eloquently and succinctly than the Representative from New York.