‘Keep trying’: Trump’s snarky taunting of a former Democratic Congresswomen is handled with humor

“You know it’s bad when even Trump is feeling bad for me.”

Responding to Truth Social from Donald Trump, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez clapped back against the president-elect’s attempt to deride her election loss with characteristic one-liner wit.

Ocasio-Cortez had been running for a position to lead fellow Democrats on an oversight panel, but ultimately lost the vote to Rep. Gerry Connolly, who has served on the panel for a decade longer. His nomination was supported by leading Democrats in the legislative branch, such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. AOC was a longshot for the position, but she obviously isn’t letting her loss get her down – no matter what Donald Trump has to say about it.

Donald Trump’s remark towards Ocasio-Cortez reads as strikingly petty, but pettiness is what the president-elect does best. Donald Trump recently ascended to new levels of spite when he announced that he would be suing a regional paper in Iowa for publishing a poll that showed him to be trailing Kamala Harris by a few points in the 2024 presidential election. It’s a stunningly vindictive move that sets a fearful precedent, one where the most powerful public official in America is given the authority to publicly persecute anyone he deems to be a political detractor. And yet, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has once again proved that she has no fear of Donald Trump – to laughing emoji was a nice touch.

AOC has dealt gracefully with Republican derision before. Once on the steps of the Capitol building she was approached by a furious Rep. Ted Yoho,  R-Fla., who pointed a finger in her face and called her “disgusting” for her earlier remark that poverty and rising crime rates in New York were linked. He then launched into a slew of insults, saying that she was “out of her mind” before finally calling her a “f*cking b*tch.”

Ocasio-Cortez put Ted Yoho in his place a few days later, excoriating the congressman on the House Floor. “This issue is not about one incident. It is cultural,” she said of Yoho’s insults. “It is a culture of lack of impunity, of accepting of violence and violent language against women and an entire structure of power that supports that.” As one of the key faces of the Progressive movement in the legislative branch, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez has frequently used her platform to speak out against misogyny in American society and government, and her equally dignified and damning response to Yoho’s verbal assault speaks to both the strength of her character and the rising power of feminist thought in the United States. At a time when a president-elect is preparing to launch a far-right agenda against women and minorities, this nation needs a strong leader like Ocasio-Cortez to stand against him and the cultural backslide into authoritarianism his administration represents.

She’s stood up to Trump before. When Donald Trump attempted to mock her education credentials, AOC responded “‘plenty of people without college degrees could run this country better than Trump ever has.” When Trump called AOC and her progressive colleagues “weak and insecure people” who threatened to “destroy our great nation” Ocasio-Cortez set the record straight by saying that she and her colleagues were fighting guarantee “basic human rights” while Trump and his allies were attempting to “jack up drug prices,” “scam student loans,” and “hurt immigrant kids.”

While Trump has declared himself to be a protector of women “whether they like it or not,” Alexandra Ocasio Cortez has made it clear that he should keep his opinions, policies, and his hands to himself.