U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) reacts during a House Oversight Committee hearing with U.S. governors about state policies regarding undocumented migrants, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump has long been disdainful of progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York). In 2019, during his first term, Trump infamously told AOC and three other progressive Democratic congresswomen of color — Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."
Six years later, in 2025, Trump is still feuding with AOC, who is now serving her fourth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. Trump, in a June 24 rant on his Truth Social platform, wrote, "Stupid AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the ‘dumbest’ people in Congress, is now calling for my Impeachment, despite the fact that the Crooked and Corrupt Democrats have already done that twice before."
Ocasio-Cortez, in a June 24 post on X, formerly Twitter, told Trump, "Mr. President, don't take your anger out on me – I'm just a silly girl. Take it out on whoever convinced you to betray the American people and our Constitution by illegally bombing Iran and dragging us into war. It only took you 5 months to break almost every promise you made."
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Salon's Amanda Marcotte discussed Trump's animosity for Ocasio-Cortez during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast and laid out some reasons why the Bronx/Queens congresswoman is getting under his skin so badly.
During the interview, posted on June 25, Marcotte told host Greg Sargent, "Everything with Donald Trump obviously is psychological projection — everything he accuses somebody else of is. You know him, he’s a narcissist, so he's putting his own insecurities on other people. I think often, this thing happens more when the object of his ire is a woman. Everything he’s saying about AOC could not be more just projecting his own inadequacies onto her, calling her 'dumb' and 'chaotic.'"
Marcotte continued, "It's so funny because you look at the exchange, and she's everything he's trying to convince people he is. She's calm, she’s intelligent, she understands the gravity of the situation, whereas he is a disorderly, stupid, mental child."
The "situation" that Marcotte was referring to was the Iran-Israel conflict and Trump's decision to launch three military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday, June 21.
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Ocasio-Cortez, Marcotte argued, exposes Trump's "insecurities" in a major way.
Marcotte told Sargent, "I think Ocasio-Cortez has often talked about her time being a bartender and how useful it was in teaching her to be politician. And this is a really classic example, because if you’re a woman in the service industry, men taking out all their issues on you is a common experience—and she handled it with aplomb
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Listen to The New Republic's full interview with Amanda Marcotte at this link or read the transcript here.