Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., claimed in bizarre Twitter rant on Monday that Republicans do not actually care about religion, and would not accept “Christ himself” if he “came to the floor of Congress and repeated his teachings.”
The Democratic socialist made the comments during Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s first day of confirmation hearings, after Republicans attacked Senate Democrats for trying to hold Barrett’s Catholic faith against her.
Quoting a speech she made on the House floor during a House Oversight hearing on religious freedom earlier this year, Ocasio-Cortez said:
Sick and tired of Republicans who co-opt faith as an excuse to advance bigotry and barbarism.
Fact is, if today Christ himself came to the floor of Congress and repeated his teachings, many would malign him as a radical and eject him from the chamber. https://t.co/y19PBDw5co
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 12, 2020
Back in February, Ocasio-Cortez made a similar claim.
“Sometimes, especially this body, I feel as though if Christ himself walked through these doors and said what he said thousands of years ago, that we should love our neighbor and our enemy, that we should welcome the stranger, fight for the least of us,” she said during the hearing, “He would be maligned as a radical and rejected from these doors.”
Democrats have suggested that Barrett does not deserve to sit on the Supreme Court bench because she is a faithful Catholic.
When she was nominated to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Barrett was told by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that her nomination was “controversial” because her Catholic “dogma lives loudly within you.”
Barrett, however, made it clear during her confirmation hearing that she would consider arguments based on their merits and according to the text of the law, not on her own personal preferences.