She argued the attacks are simply scare tactics.
In an exchange filmed by the MeidasTouch Network, Ocasio-Cortez was asked whether there was “concern that this slippery slope towards socialism inevitably ends up as full-blown communism.”
“No. I’m not concerned about America turning into a communist country in like a year,” replied the New York Democratic congresswoman, who has been tipped as a potential 2028 presidential candidate.
“I think that’s very silly,” she added, before explaining why:
“Just think about how impossible it has been to raise the minimum wage in America in 10, 15, 20 years. We can’t even raise the minimum wage. Do Republicans really think that this stuff is going to happen? No, they don’t. They’re trying to scare people because they don’t want us talking about the fact that we all have a right to health care in this country.”
“So they want to call it communist, and they want to call everything they don’t like communist,” she continued, adding that it’s “because if people actually wake up to the fact that their elected officials are screwing them over when they get here, then they’re going to realize that they deserve better and that health care as a right isn’t crazy, it isn’t pie in the sky.”
“They want to call this stuff communist because they don’t want us to realize that the rest of the developed world has guaranteed health care,” she added. “So they want to call it communist because they don’t want you to know that Germany, Italy, the U.K., Canada, everybody else has it better than us, and we spend the most amount of money for the worst care in the modern developed world.”