Ocasio-Cortez defends Fox appearance: I was saving elderly from corona misinformation

“I usually don’t go on Fox on principle, but misinformation about coronavirus has made me concerned about risk,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

By Aaron Sull, World Israel News

Over the weekend, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defended her decision to break “principle” by appearing on Fox News last week, in order to protect viewers against the news station’s “misinformation” regarding the coronavirus.

“Hey all, wanted to drop a [note] for accountability,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Saturday. “I usually don’t go on FOX on principle, but misinformation about coronavirus has made me concerned about risk.”

Similarly, Cortez took to Instagram to say her appearance helped protect “bad information” geared at Fox News‘ viewer base of older people.

“There has been a lot of Coronavirus disinformation on the network and I’m seriously concerned about people getting hurt,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Saturday.

“It was weird! But this is an emergency. Bad information can be life threatening so I wanted to set the record straight with their audience which skews older (an at-risk pop),” she wrote.

Prior to Thursday’s appearance, Ocasio-Cortez had never gone on air with Fox News, claiming the news station is racist.

In December, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson aired a segment describing Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional district as “filled with garbage, litter and trash piled in public places and is plagued by homelessness.”

During the segment, Carlson interviewed a guest, Seth Barron, an editor of the City Journal, who described Ocasio-Cortez’s district as the “least American” in the country, “occupied by relatively few American citizens” and a high percentage of people who came to the country illegally.

Following the broadcast, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “The main reason I haven’t [appeared on Fox News] is squaring the fact that the ad revenue from it bankrolls a white supremacist sympathizer to broadcast an hour-long production of unmitigated racism, without any accountability whatsoever.”

Since taking office, Ocasio-Cortez has accused many of racism – especially the State of Israel.

Last summer, Ocasio-Cortez signed onto Rep. Ilhan Omar’s resolution in support of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, a resolution that compared BDS to boycotts of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Ocasio-Cortez also supports cutting U.S. aid to Israel as a means to signal disapproval of Israeli policies. She also endorsed presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who takes the same anti-Israel position.

Associated Press contributed to this report