Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) did a victory lap on Twitter on Monday after news broke that Tucker Carlson was leaving the Fox News Channel — a day after Ocasio-Cortez accused him of “incitement of violence.”
Ocasio-Cortez responded to the news with a single word: “Wow.”
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 24, 2023
But then she retweeted a clip of her Sunday interview with former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki in which she made her claim of incitement.
.@AOC: "When you look at what Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence." pic.twitter.com/qjnnDQrtqj
— Inside with Jen Psaki (@InsideWithPsaki) April 23, 2023
As Breitbart News reported last weekend, Ocasio-Cortez told Psaki (who appeared to agree) that she wants to pass laws to restrict what Carlson — and journalists in general — can say, which would be a violation of the First Amendment. She said: “We have very real issues with what is permissible on air. We saw that with January 6, and we saw that in the lead-up to January 6. How we navigate questions, not just of freedom of speech but also accountability for incitement of violence, this is the line that we have to really explore through law.”
The First Amendment reads (emphasis added): “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
