Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has responded to a CNN report that outgoing Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) referred to her as a “shiny object,” calling the comment “disappointing.”
The soon-to-be congresswoman took to Twitter on Saturday to address the senator’s interview with CNN published earlier this week.
“I’m a little confused why she’s the thing,” McCaskill said, according to CNN. “But it’s a good example of what I’m talking about, a bright shiny new object, came out of nowhere and surprised people when she beat a very experienced congressman.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated a longtime Democratic incumbent in New York’s 14th Congressional District in the June primary election, called the interview “pretty disappointing.”
“Not sure why Sen. McCaskill keeps going on TV to call me a ‘thing’ and ‘shiny object,’ but it’s pretty disappointing,” she wrote on Twitter.
McCaskill lost her re-election bid to Republican Josh Hawley in November. She also reportedly referred to Hawley as a “bright shining object” during her interview with CNN.
While talking about the upcoming 2020 presidential election earlier this month in an interview with the New York Times podcast The Daily, McCaskill said she hopes Democrats who have been elected to Congress from “very blue districts” listen to those who “replaced Republicans.”
She added: “Not [those who] defeated Democrats in primaries, if you know who I mean.”
McCaskill then referenced Ocasio-Cortez during the podcast, saying everyone is “fascinated with” her.
“I hope she listens to people who defeated Republicans, because it’s the people who defeated Republicans, in this election, that we need to be emulating, not the people who defeated Democrats in primaries,” she continued.
Later in the interview, McCaskill doubled down on the importance of Democrats not going “so far to the left” in nominating a candidate for president. She said Democrats could lose “all those white working class voters that had been a huge part” of the party.
Ocasio-Cortez also criticized McCaskill on Saturday for her rhetoric on immigration.
“McCaskill promised she’d ‘100% back Trump up’ on his anti-immigrant rhetoric & lost,” her tweet said.
McCaskill told Fox News in October that she supported President Donald Trump on stopping the so-called “caravan” of Central American migrants “at the border.”
“I think the president has to use every tool at his disposal and I 100 percent back him up on that.”