What do you call a person who won’t help a supposedly beloved relative, her grandmother, who’s in material need? While you could probably think of a number of names, there’s one thing we can certainly call a particular person thus guilty: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It was a fairly big story some days ago when the Democrat New York congresswoman claimed that her grandmother, her “abuela,” in Puerto Rico was living in a broken-down home because President Trump failed to deliver the necessary aid. Following this announcement, conservative commentator Matt Walsh launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the grandmother and collected $110,000 in mere hours. Strikingly, AOC refused the money.
If this isn’t bad “optics,” what is? But it got even worse for the politician. The added attention inspired the Daily Mail to send a reporter to Puerto Rico on a fact-finding mission. The conclusion?
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Grandma AOC does have problems; there’s a tarp over her house. But Trump had nothing to do with it.
In fact, a woman identified as AOC’s aunt said that the aid was given to Puerto Rico — it’s just not getting to the people.
But here’s how the story got started, with a tweet that AOC perhaps now wishes she didn’t send:
And the announcement below tells the tale regarding Walsh’s charitable response, which one commentator calls a “brilliant troll.”
As for the Mail’s findings, the paper wrote about visiting Grandma AOC:
[W]hen we politely approached the two-story flat-roofed residence, we were met by a woman who told us emphatically after viewing AOC’s tweets: ‘I am her aunt. We don’t speak for the community.’
The relative, who refused to give her name, added: ‘We are private people, [sic] we don’t talk about our family.’ Ironically for AOC, she also refused to blame former President Donald Trump for thousands of Hurricane Maria victims being unable to get money to repair shattered homes.
…Her aunt said: ‘In this area people need a lot of help. Many people have needed it for the past four years and haven’t had anything.’
Yet she did not pin that on Trump, adding: ‘It’s a problem here in Puerto Rico with the administration and the distribution of help. It is not a problem with Washington. We had the assistance and it didn’t get to the people.’
This is an old story, too: Less developed lands (e.g., the Third World) are notorious for accepting aid and then not distributing it to the people either because of corruption (usually), incompetence or both.
A Twitter respondent, Annette Colón, JD, vindicated the aunt’s assessment. “My family members live in areas in the island where the mayors are not corrupt and have ALL received help (and I have a very big family),” she wrote. “The corruption is in the island.”
But then there’s personal moral corruption. As GOP congressional candidate Lavern Spicer tweeted, responding to AOC, “Honey, you drive a Tesla and have two apartments. If your grandmother is living poor that’s because you don’t help her out. I’m surprised that a socialist wouldn’t redistribute that wealth to their grandma. Sad!”
In truth, a normal person would be ashamed to tweet what AOC did unless he could also honestly say he was funding his grandma’s repairs. Note here that the congresswoman, while not filthy rich, does have some means. Moreover, true charity consists not just of giving a bit from our excess, but actually making painful sacrifices when necessary. Besides, with her 12.7 million Twitter followers, AOC could easily have raised millions for her grandmother via crowd-funding herself.
But “shame” is often an alien concept to moderns, particularly the leftist variety. And insofar as leftists may feel shame, their warped moral foundation ensures it will be over the wrong things.
That AOC not only didn’t help her grandmother, but also refused aid offered, is revealing. Many would conclude that her real goal was to use her grandma as a political prop. This wouldn’t be unusual, either.
Just consider Al Gore. Speaking at the 1996 Democratic National Convention, he slammed then-GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole as a shill for Big Tobacco. Rendering a tear-jerking story about his sister’s tragic 1984 death of lung cancer, the then-vice president emotionally vowed that he would fight the tobacco companies till his dying breath.
The truth? While campaigning for the presidency in North Carolina in 1988 — four years after his sister’s death — Gore wooed the state’s tobacco producers with the following impassioned appeal:
Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I’ve hoed it. I’ve chopped it. I’ve shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it.
Apparently, there was a curious lag between Gore’s sister’s tragic demise and the emergence of his feelings surrounding it.
As for AOC’s story, it’s reminiscent of something many have observed about leftists. They want to keep people poor and dependent, the accusation goes, because then they can use them to gain power by promising government handouts.
Similarly, is it the case with AOC that a needy grandma is politically useful; a happy, well-taken-care-of grandma is not?
But political machinations aside, AOC’s behavior is status quo — for leftists. As journalist Peter Schweizer pointed out in his 2008 piece “Don’t listen to the liberals — Right-wingers really are nicer people, latest research shows,” it’s not just that liberals are far less likely to give to charity than conservatives are.
They’re also far less likely to believe they have an obligation to help relatives in need.
As Schweizer notes, leftists are consumed with the big-government mentality and “want to outsource their obligations to others.”
Whatever the case, speaking volumes about AOC’s moral stature is that she thinks Trump had a responsibility to help her grandma, but she does not.
