Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Fires Back at GOP Candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene After ‘Dumb Blonde’ Joke

On Monday, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez clapped back at Georgia House candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene for a joke about the “dumb blonde” trope. Greene made an unprompted tweet on Sunday, sarcastically “thanking” Ocasio-Cortez for “single handily (sic)” putting “an end to all ‘dumb blonde’ jokes,” implying that Ocasio-Cortez disproved the theory as a brunette. Ocasio-Cortez kept the high ground in her response.

“Don’t worry Mrs. Greene, I completely understand why you need to swing + miss at my intellect to make yourself feel better,” the congresswoman wrote. “You seem to have some trouble spelling your own insults correctly. Next time try ‘single-handedly,’ it’ll work better. Good luck writing legislation!”

Greene was quick to respond, calling the error a typo, and claiming that she is better equipped to govern than Ocasio-Cortez. She hurled the labels “socialist” and “Marxist” at Ocasio-Cortez as insults and attacked the “Green New Deal” legislation that Ocasio-Cortez champions.

Greene is considered one of the more radical far-right candidates for the U.S. Congress in the upcoming election, thanks mostly to her fervent belief in the QAnon conspiracy theories. She makes Facebook videos espousing QAnon talking points and taking the anonymous online posts of the mysterious “Q” as fact.

QAnon is the name for a broad, decentralized conspiracy theory that there are unelected, secretive powers within the U.S. government that exert real societal control, and that President Donald Trump is waging a secret war against them. It holds that Trump cannot talk about this process publicly, but allows secret signs to slip out for loyal followers to find.

The QAnon theory has been thoroughly debunked at every level, with investigative reports by The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN and even Fox News finding that there is nothing to them. Still, Greene is not the only public official to embrace this urban mythology — Trump himself has been increasingly supportive of the idea.

QAnon has been associated with acts of violence over the last few years and has officially been identified as a “potential source of domestic terrorism” by the FBI. It has also been linked to anti-Semitism, to varying degrees, by human rights watchdog groups. Greene herself has not shied away from the violent undertones of the theory — in one Facebook video earlier this year, she brandished an AR-15-style assault rifle and warned “AntiFa terrorists” to “stay the hell out of Northwest Georgia.”

Greene is now running unopposed for the seat of the 14th congressional district in Georgia. Incumbent Rep. Tom Graves is retiring, and Democratic candidate Kevin Van Ausdal dropped out of the race earlier this month due to unspecified “personal reasons.” She has the public endorsement of Trump as well.