Progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has torn into Donald Trump as the government now careens into shutdown.
“There absolutely is an unprecedented abuse of power, destruction of norms, erosion of our government and our democracy in order to prop up an authoritarian style of governance,” she raged during an interview with MSNBC. “That is happening.”
With no funding deal agreed between the MAGA administration and their Democratic counterparts, in no small part due to a standoff over healthcare provisions, the U.S. government is slated to enter a shutdown that could see roughly 750,000 federal workers either furloughed or working without pay.
President Trump, who only on Monday posted a bizarre AI video of Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero and a dub of Chuck Schumer talking about the Democratic Party’s “woke bulls–t,” has instructed federal agencies to begin preparing for mass layoffs amid fears the GOP will use the hiatus to further smash through its agenda of gutting the federal bureaucracy.
For Ocasio-Cortez, however, the moment need not necessarily be one of despair for the Republicans’ adversaries.
“They are weaker than they look,” she told MSNBC. “It is important that we remember that, because what they rely on is the impression of power, the perception of inevitability in us giving up in advance.”
As evidence, she argued that “Donald Trump is at record levels of unpopularity in his tenure,” and that “the Republican House is at record levels of unpopularity.”
Republicans are jacking up healthcare costs across the country and Trump is FAR weaker than he looks.The GOP knows their popularity is tanking as the American people turn on their extremism.We now have a chance to defend the healthcare of millions of Americans. Let’s take it. https://t.co/tEaB9V4KJa
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 1, 2025
“They are underwater across the board, and they know it, and that is causing them to double down in public,” she said. “But it is backfiring. That is why, whether it’s a shutdown, whether it’s all of this, they want us to blink first, and we have too much to save.”
A YouGov poll earlier in September found the president’s approval rating currently sits at a miserable 39 percent, not only the lowest numbers of his second term, but also coming in only four points above the lowest numbers of his first term.
In the weeks since, a new survey by CNN found that while his overall approval stats may have improved somewhat, a whopping 58 percent of respondents, rising to 64 percent among independent voters, are categorically opposed to his ongoing mobilization of federal troops to police Democrat-controlled urban centres.
Sharing a clip of her interview with MSNBC later on, Ocasio-Cortez doubled down on her words of cautious optimism on X. “The GOP knows their popularity is tanking as the American people turn on their extremism,” she said. “We now have a chance to defend the healthcare of millions of Americans. Let’s take it.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for a response to her comments.
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