Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) mixed it up on Monday in a series of tweets that touched on gun control, the Green New Deal, sexism and sarcasm.
Scott, the former Florida governor, kicked it off by blasting a sweeping plan to combat gun violence released Monday by presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
Booker’s proposals include a program that would require people to obtain a license in order to purchase a gun. It would also include a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
“The latest terrible idea to come out of the Democrats’ 2020 primary is a federal gun registry,” Scott tweeted.
Scott continued to mock Booker’s plan and brought Ocacio-Cortez into the fray to ridicule her Green New Deal resolution ― a bold proposal outlining ways the U.S. can cut global emissions in the coming decades.
“What’s next? Will we have to register sharp knives? Maybe @AOC will make us register every time we buy meat as part of her #GreenNewDeal,” Scott wrote.
Ocasio-Cortez challenged Scott’s comments by saying they lacked “critical thinking.”
“If you were a female candidate, maybe you’d be called ‘unlikeable,’ ‘crazy,’ or ‘uninformed,’” she tweeted. “But since you’re not, this inadequacy is accepted as normal.”
Scott then defensively claimed he was joking in his previous tweet and continued to attack Ocacio-Cortez.
“That a sitting Congresswoman doesn’t understand sarcasm would be embarrassing to the institution if you hadn’t embarrassed yours to the point of irrelevance already,” he wrote.
Scott became a multi-millionaire as a co-founder of Columbia Hospital Corp. in the late 1980s. During the time he served as its CEO, the company was found to have defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and other federal programs. He was never directly charged with any crime, though the Department of Justice fined the company $1.7 billion.