Ocasio-Cortez: There Will Be ‘Grave Impacts’ on Democracy if Trump Elected

TAPPER: “Before you go, there have been a lot of questions, especially since that special counsel report last week that cleared President Biden of any wrongdoing legally, but certainly impugned his memory. And this come — that came on the heels of just, a few days before, him talking about conversations he had in 2021 with world leaders who had died several years before that. He was confusing world leaders. Tom Suozzi told the local news station when this question was raised about Biden, ‘The bottom line is he’s old. I mean, he’s 81- years-old.’ He wouldn’t say, Suozzi, whether Biden would be the Democratic nominee at the party convention in August. Do you have any concerns about his age? Do you have any concerns about whether or not he should be the nominee?”
Ocasio-Cortez: “I mean, I think, right now, when it comes to the President’s age, folks are talking about how he’s 81. But we have to look at — first of all, Donald Trump is around the same age as the President.”
TAPPER: “77, yeah.”
Ocasio-Cortez: “He’s 77-years-old. They could have gone to high school together. And beyond that, Donald Trump has 91 indictments. And I know who I’m going to choose. It’s going to be one of the most successful presidents in modern American history that passed the Inflation Reduction Act, that got us the American Rescue Plan, that ensured that we could pass one of the largest federal investments in climate change in U.S. history. And as far as we go, as we know, virtually all the filing deadlines have passed. There’s already been a primary. Voters have outright rejected Dean Phillips. President Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, and hopefully he’ll be re-elected as President of the United States.”
TAPPER: “Are you worried at all about these challenges from the left? Jill Stein? Cornel West? I don’t know where RFK Jr. Is, whether he’s left right or center. But there is a real fear that they could take votes away from Biden.”
Ocasio-Cortez: “That is real. That is real, especially in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, critical swing states. But we need to understand what we are staring down in this country. If Donald Trump is elected President of the United States, we do not know if there will be a verifiable next election that has integrity. He already tried to — we saw on January 6th he tried to overturn the results of a presidential election by force, by inciting a riot. And I think we need to be very, very realistic about the grave, grave impacts of a Donald Trump election. It is not a joke. It is not a game. We need to protect our democracy. And ideally, it’s going to be on progressive values.”
TAPPER: “Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, always good to have you. Thank you so much.”