From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - AOC's Socialism On The Front Page Of GQ

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

On this episode, Sean and Rachel sit down to discuss the GQ article profiling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and talk about the socialist ideology that they believe AOC is sharing.   Later, they discuss why they believe Americans should be weary of left-wing policies, and talk about an exchange between CNN Host Don Lemon and CNN Republican Commentator S.E. Cupp that has many labeling Lemon a misogynist.   Follow Sean and Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey, everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life and my wife,

Rachel Campos Duffy. Sean, it's so great to be back at our kitchen table. We have a couple really interesting topics today. You know, I love when culture and politics come together. And in both of these topics that happened. So we're going to talk about Don Lemon asking Essie Cup if she had mommy brain when she sort of lost her train of thought in the middle of an interview, something you and I know has happened to me. And we'll talk about that on air. It's terrifying. And so I have a lot of thoughts on that topic. But before we go there, Sean, we have to talk about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or as our friend Tucker Carlson calls her, Sandy. Sandy, she had a GQ interview, an interview in GQ magazine.

And it was fascinating because, well, she talks about men. She talks about race. She talks about the Green New Deal. She talks about how America hates women. It's just there's so much there. So we thought it would be really fun to unpack some of this. It was a completely fascinating article. One, because at first blush, you look at this piece in GQ and it is like a fawning piece from a left-wing activist talking about left-wing topics with AOC. It's a fashion spread too, Sean. Can I mention that? She looks amazing. I'm sorry. I don't,

I'm not her fan. Do you want to date her? Yeah, I know. No, only if you are saying mean things about her, does it mean that you want to date her? So I'm actually saying something nice right now. She had the Latina hoop. She had the red lipstick. She's wearing, you know, like as all good, lipstick. She's wearing, you know, like as all good, you know, socialists for the people, you know, she's wearing super couture, incredibly high fashion outfits. And so, I mean, she looks amazed. So I just want to lay that out. She looks amazing in this article and the article you are right, Sean is very funny. You know, and so it starts off by calling AOC the voice of a generation. And if I'm honest, I mean, it's true. She speaks to a lot of young people and her viewpoint, which by the way, let's be clear. She is a socialist, not far away from a communist.

She's someone who's trying to take more freedom away from you and give more power to the government. That is the mission that she has. And I don't know that I'd say that she's the voice of a generation. I think she's a radical voice for a part of her generation and for a younger group of people who don't actually know our history, who don't know kind of when you play out the ideas and concepts that AOC talks about, if you play them out, where does it lead our country? Where does it lead us in regard to economic prosperity? Where does it lead us in regard to our own personal freedom? They don't understand that. But it is a part of her generation that she's speaking to. But I would say it's not fair to say that she speaks for the whole generation.

But the clip, the article starts off by saying, yes, she speaks for the whole generation because all young people now are socialists. I think it's fair to say, Sean, that she is definitely a cultural icon for young people. She is incredibly savvy. She has harnessed social media in a way that no other modern politician has been able to do. A lot of this stuff goes under the for like even the mainstream media uh who loves her by the way what she is doing is super subversive it's on tiktok it's on instagram live it's mixing politics and i'm just like you i'm putting together ikea furniture i'm you know cooking you know hispanic food using sasson and, you know, all this stuff. I'm putting on my makeup and this is how you do it.

And this is what I just learned. She also follows in that celebrity trend of showing your skincare routine. And it's very subversive. It's very relatable. And I do believe that there is a generation, particularly of young women who absolutely idolize her. I want to just, before we unpack this interview, because there's so many great stuff that was captured that I think you and I both, we had a discussion even off the podcast, we couldn't stop talking about it. But before we

get to that, I want to touch on what you said, which I think is so insightful, that so many of the people that follow her politically and now think they believe the same things she believes, it's not even just that they don't understand how our system works. They have absolutely no clue about the death and destruction that socialism has wrought wherever it started. You know, millions of people have died and starved because of these top-down, centralized, controlled, authoritarian forms of government. And it's just this tyranny has left millions dead, whether it's Mao and Pol Pot and, you know,

Stalin and Lenin and Castro and Maduro and Chavez. And it's always been to me so ironic that the socialism in America has been, you know, ushered in by a Hispanic woman of all things. But she calls herself, Sean, a democratic socialist. And that is what Bernie Sanders does. And they do that on purpose because they think it's more palatable. I want to read a quote to you

before we get going. There's no such thing as a democratic socialist. No, it's a socialist. Of course, there's no such thing as a democratic socialist. And actually, I believe, as Ayn Rand believes,

that socialism and communism actually really is, they're more than cousins, they're sisters, they may even be the same thing. Here's what Ayn Rand says about it. She says, there is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end. Communism proposes to enslave men by force. Socialism by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide. So in one, you vote for you vote for socialism. It's still the same authoritarian circumstance. The other communism is, you know, by force. I think that's that's fairly accurate. And ultimately, for all her activist talk, Sean, her politics is about taking away your freedom. It's absolutely about taking away your freedom. And here's where I think

young people, and just a lot of people, get mesmerized by the message because the socialist narrative and the promises of socialism are really attractive to a lot of people, but they don't understand the consequences of the policies. And so just for example, I'm going to go to the tax code. I'm not going to go wonky, but- Oh, come on, Sean. I wanted to talk about AOC. No, this is about AOC. Stick with me for a moment. Stick with me. I'm not getting off topic. I'll let the politician talk about the tax code. Right. But the point is, so when you lower taxes, you get more growth, right? And Democrats then say, well,

why don't we just raise taxes and we'll have the same amount of growth and we'll bring in more money. The consequence though, of raising taxes is that you get less growth. You don't get the same growth that you had with lower taxes. And with what AOC is saying, she wants people to believe that you can have the same kind of economy, the same kind of freedom just with socialist policies. And the reality is you will not have this kind of economy. You will not have this kind of freedom under socialism. You have to cash all of that in. That's the part of the story that they never share. You don't know what you have to get up to achieve Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders utopia in America. That's never shared with the American people, but you do give it up.

And I don't give up freedom in the same way that, you know, when you're, when you're a child, you're not fully free, right? You're under the, the, the, the, the control and authority of your parents. Your parents may give you stuff for free. Right. But, but ultimately you're under their authority. It isn't until you're fully emancipated and making your own money that you're truly independent. And it goes way back, Sean, in the 19th century, Alexis de Tocqueville, who famously wrote democracy in America way back, you know, in the 1830s,

he described despotism, authoritarianism. He described it, and think about how way back this goes. He describes it as a system that strives to keep its subjects in perpetual childhood. That's the nanny state that we conservatives talk so much about. So, you know, nothing is for free, right? They're in exchange for the free stuff that socialists and communists and authoritarians are going to give you. They take part of your freedom back. And that's a decision that you have to make. Do you want to be under that nanny state? Do you want to get is the free stuff worth your freedom? I think it's that simple. And as Reagan effectively pointed out,

once you give up your freedom, you can't get it back. Once you make the trade, the trade is in essence for good. And you really don't know what you're getting. You make the trade though, and you're going to be stuck with socialism because you don't get back to this point of freedom. But in the article, Rachel- And that's why she's been so effective, Sean. I mean, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran on things, even when she, what year did she run, Sean? Was it 2018? 2018, that's right. The things that she ran on, it's We just forgave a bunch of student loans for lawyers and grad students and art majors. We just did that. The Green New Deal, even Democrats laughed about the Green New Deal. We just passed it, albeit under the guise of the Inflation Reduction Act. I'm going to correct you like you said, we didn't pass it. They passed it. albeit under the guise of the Inflation Reduction Act.

I'm going to correct you like you say, we didn't pass it. They passed it. Fair enough. Democrats passed it. I'm not taking credit for that. But these are now normalized ideas, not just in the Democrat Party, but Sean, you and I talked to so many young Republicans, and I would say the vast majority of them believe that in climate change and that it is the existential threat that AOC thinks it is to the point where she says she doesn't think she wants to have children because she's worried about how that would burden Mother Earth, the environment, and also because she's afraid the world's going to end. I think now in five years, because she said, I don't know how many years ago, it was 12 years, the planet, and therefore you have to give up your freedom and let us decide what kind of economy you live in, what kind of power you have, what kind of car you drive, because if not, your life will be destroyed. And so they're conservative in almost every aspect of the conservative spectrum, except on this issue. And I thought the interview was fascinating, Rachel, because it starts off by talking about

the day that the interview started on the day that Roe v. Wade was overturned in the Dobbs decision and how AOC then went to the steps of the Supreme Court and had to be with the people and protest. And they're talking about how in the Dobbs decision, the Constitution was gutted. And we've mentioned this before, and I know you've all heard this, but we all know that the abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution. There's no right to abortion. There's no constitutional right. It doesn't exist. of thin air in Roe v. Wade, and even liberal jurists have talked about the lack of reasoning on the authority of making abortion a constitutional right. So they're talking about constitutional rights with abortion that don't exist in the Constitution, but the things that are enumerated in the Constitution, Democrats are actually attacking. We just found out

Constitution. Democrats are actually attacking. We just found out in the last two weeks that Joe Biden and his administration was partnering with big tech to silence conservative voices who they disagreed with. Now, you can't be prohibited in the Constitution, in the First Amendment, from limiting speech and then partner or give agency to someone else to do it for you because you can't. That's illegal. But that's exactly what Joe Biden has been doing with his Democrat leadership, to shut down speech, and it's coming from the government. On top of that, they're attacking the Second Amendment and our right to bear arms. So I find it fascinating that on the steps of the Supreme Court, She's out there, fist raised.

You know, remember, they didn't mention this in the article, but we talked about it earlier, where she had the fake handcuffs on, hands behind her back, but talking about the Constitution, but then actually not defending the actual things

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To discover how, visit bhp.com slash better future. Right. It's such a great point. Yeah, of course, it's just amazing that they never mentioned the scandal around the fact that she was pretending like she was some civil rights activist and put her hands behind her back in a fake handcuff position when there were no handcuffs. It was like in her imagination or for the cameras. And, you know, she wanted to have some like, you know, again, like this, she wanted the photo op of her looking like she was, you know, being dragged off by the police and protest. But of course, you're absolutely right. And in fact, what Roe versus Wade did was give more rights to the states, more rights to the people to decide what they wanted to do. It's a very controversial issue. It's called democracy, right? We move back

to democracy, letting people decide. And they don't want that because she is ultimately I mean, to her credit, there are some some people like Joe Biden, who I don't believe actually believes any of this socialist stuff. I think he was a fairly normal Democrat, a corrupt one, but a fairly normal Democrat. to have power at the highest level, which he does, he had to agree to go along with this. And Sean, the power of this woman is, it's breathtaking. And in some ways, I am afraid of her because I think she's very powerful. On the other hand, I admire the way she's taken what she's been given. She's not the brightest mind when it comes to economics. I know she has a degree in economics from Boston. She's very economically ignorant. So many of her policies from the Green New Deal to taxes to this student loan forgiveness are going to literally bankrupt our country and take us into an inflationary spiral that I wish she had studied in Boston, at University of Boston, of what happened in Latin America when they, you know, printed money and devalued their

currency. I mean, she has no idea. That said, you know, she has 8 million followers, for example, on Instagram. They follow everything that she does. She's a true believer. And I think her authenticity, unlike Joe Biden, is really effective in getting new acolytes and recruiting them because so many kids are not being properly educated in the school. So there's a certain point of it that I admire. And at the same time that she has all this power, Sean, what was fascinating to me in the article is how oppressed she thinks she is, how she says that even though she came from being a bartender to being one of the most influential people in American politics, I mean, she was the first one to call for impeachment and it happened twice.

So I think she still says that America hates women, that she started to tear up in the interview when they asked her if she thought a woman could ever be president. And she teared up because she said it just pained her to have to say that she didn't think that there's a part of her that thinks it couldn't be possible because we're such a misogynistic country. You know, it's fascinating to me because there's been a whole cottage industry around really wealthy, really powerful, really successful people playing the victim card. And you talk about that quite a bit. And AOC is playing the same game. I'm victimized, but I'm on the cover of GQ. I'm able to come up with a radical policy, the Green New Deal with Ed Markey, the Massachusetts senator, and we're

able to actually surreptitiously get it through Congress and a number of different bills that have passed this year, whether it was the infrastructure package, the $1.2 trillion. A lot of the Renew Deal was in there, but then also this, as you mentioned, the Inflation Reduction Act, they've got it in. She is powerful. And then to play the victim is absolutely outrageous. And when they talk about her power, I found this fascinating. It goes back to the earlier point that I made, that she doesn't describe power as dominance over others, but she does feed power over her own choices. And so I think that's a fascinating line to go. I don't see-

Can you unpack that just a little bit? Say that again, because I do remember that in the article. a fascinating line to go. Can you unpack that just a little bit? Say that again, because I do remember that in the article. Yes. She says that she doesn't, because she got a question about whether she's a powerful person and what does she think about her power? And she says, well, I don't define power as dominance over others is her response, but that's exactly what she's doing. She's using her power to implement rules, to dominate over people, to limit their choices, to limit their freedom. She's using power to dominate people. She may not see it that way. She might be honest and say, I don't want to dominate over people, but that's exactly what she's doing. That's what socialism does. It's a dominance over other

people. You have the state, the powerful making decisions for the masses. That's dominance. And again, I think the way she speaks, I think she believes it. And I think you're right. After Donald Trump, I do think the honesty that a candidate speaks with, the authenticity, as you mentioned, is really important. And she's authentic. She's authentically just wrong. I mean, what she's saying is absolutely wrong. And I think it's a lie, but I do believe that she believes it, which is why she can deliver it in such an authentic fashion. But again, how rich is it to say, I don't want to dominate over people? And that's what every one of our policies is actually doing is dominance and taking away your freedom.

And that's what socialism is ultimately. I mean, they see everything in terms of power. And you're either a victim or you're the oppressor. And they play victim in order to become the oppressor. It's the classic communist ploy. One of the things, Sean, you know how I am with technology. Technology, whether it's trying to figure something out on my phone, trying to, you know, print a document, even, I mean, I am so bad and nothing makes me feel older than, you know, this technology divide. And certainly AOC, by the way, you know, is, is, is so good with social media because of that. I can't figure out how to download, you know, the figure out how to download the clips that they send me from the show that I should be posting on social media. I don't end up posting them because I don't know how to undo the box. But anyway, there's another thing that makes

me feel really old that I captured in this article. And that is, I don't speak in that self-care language, that BS, meaningless activist language that I noticed she speaks in, Meghan Markle speaks in, and so many young people speak in. It's like this other language to me, and it feels like godly gook, but it clearly is effective. And it speaks to a generation, because I do believe there's this like self-care generation out there. Sean, how interesting did you find her comments about January 6th? Because we all know she was not in the building when the, the, the, the January 6th riot happened in the Capitol. She was not in there. And yet she claims in this article that she was so terrified for her life

that now she does not walk to work. She drives, again, a justification for driving short distances in an SUV. Or no, she has an electric vehicle. A Tesla. A Tesla, yes. She has a Tesla. She drives a Tesla to work. How nice.

Yeah. She drives a Tesla. From a condo above Whole Foods. Listen, I, you know, this is, this is, this is all very rich. I love how she can just get away with all this, all this hypocrisy. She's just a woman of the people, you know, poor thing. Listen, I, again, I don't, I don't support the, you know, what happened at the I, again, I, I don't, I, I don't support, um, the, you know, the, what, what happened at the Capitol that day. Right.

I mean, I, we've talked about this before. I, I, we went in for the first time. I cried that I had the opportunity and the honor to walk in to the house. You should unpack that a little bit. Cause I don't know if people know what you're talking about. I'd never been, I'd never been in the Capitol when I won, um, my house, uh, seat House seat. Never been in before in my life. So yeah, my eighth grade class never took a trip to D.C. I never went into the Capitol.

I won a seat to Congress, came out the week later with Rachel, walked into the House chamber for the first time, and I was so awestruck and so honored and so touched by the honor that the voters had given me. I sat down and cried that I had that privilege that what only 10,000, 11,000 Americans have ever had since the birth of our country. It's a really honoring experience and that we would in any way desecrate that. I don't like, and I know you don't either. That's far different than kind of how this day has now been portrayed. And in the article, they're like, it's an insurrection and people's lives were threatened. And AOC, you know, on cue, tease it up as if, you know, she was in a violent crowd and they were chanting, you know, death to AOC.

And they had a rope and they're going to hang her. I mean, this is it's crazy. She was in. I believe she was off site. So she was in her office building, which is across the street from the Capitol. Protesters weren't in the office buildings and she was in her office building. There was no threat to AOC. And she played it up as if her life was in danger. And again, this is not about how she, again, I'm not in her mind. So maybe she did actually feel that way. But I think what this is about is driving a narrative of how radical Republicans are, how untenable a Trump supporter might be or an American first individual who holds those ideas. to drive a narrative because, listen, Rachel, their ideas are so bad and they fail, right? They have the chance to, in essence, implement so many of their ideas, whether it's now Joe Biden in the federal government or if it's Gavin Newsom in California, they're destroying

their states and they're destroying the country. They don't work. And so how do you get around it is to show that these guys are mean and they hate me and they want to kill me. And it's driving a political narrative as opposed to, I think, a true feeling that AOC should have had because she was not in danger. So what she says now, because now she's been outed as having not actually been in the Capitol. And so she has to explain what all this trauma is. She also reported in other interviews that she had to go to see a therapist for a while. And she was really, you know, upset about this. By the way, she also called for metal detectors because she says she feels she's fearful of other Republicans. What an insult to imply that, you know, other Republican members of Congress want to kill her. It's just she's such a drama

queen. And it's also manipulative and awful. But now what she says, and she says this in this GQ article is actually, yeah, she was scared about what was happening at the Capitol. But what really happened to her in that moment is that it triggered a memory of when she was actually sexually assaulted by someone that she knew. Apparently, it sounds from the article like it's somebody that she worked with at the bar that she worked at before she became a member of Congress, and that this was super triggering to her. In the article, there were several things that I found really interesting. So first, Sean, she, she says, I knew this person and, and she didn't press charges and she justifies why she, she

didn't, that she didn't want to just, she still doesn't want to press charges against this person who she says sexually assaulted her. And it was interesting because I've had discussions with Tammy Bruce, one of my colleagues who, you know, sort of in a different generation fighting for feminism. And one of the things that that generation fought for was that when people rape women, they should be held to account by the law, whether you know or don't know that person, that you should report that, you should be believed. And, and if there's enough evidence that that person, and Sean, you were a prosecutor,

that's an important component of criminal justice. No, I look at the AOC conversation about being sexually assaulted and I'll criticize AOC on all kinds of levels. I don't know what happened to her and I don't want to criticize her about the assault that she went through. Because what I saw when I was a prosecutor, and I only dealt with women who were assaulted, that it's a trauma that they carry for their whole lives. And it's horrible. It's not a momentary assault. It's an assault that lasts for the course of someone's whole life. And so

I don't want to minimize that at all. And also what you learn as a prosecutor is sometimes we see how people behave after they're assaulted and they don't do what we think would be normal for someone to do. But it's interesting. The whole studies are on how people behave and the choices they make after a sexual assault. There's oftentimes delayed disclosure. They might wait a year, two years, five years, 10 years before they actually talk about what happened to them,

where you might think. Which is what she described. Actually, Sean, she actually describes that in the article that it took her a while to come to terms with it, which is very, which is very normal.

What I do have issue with though, Rachel is, and again, if I do, I do think that if, if this happens and this was a sexual assault, that if someone does it once, they very well are going to do it again. And to protect a future woman or young girl from being assaulted, you should probably come forward and say, Hey, this happened to me. And this was the person who did it. If you don't want to press charges because you know the person, okay. But maybe you should also out the person as well to go, he raped me. Um, and any other woman who's around him or dating him should be aware of what he did to me because these are the tendencies that he has. And she did eventually Sean discl, disclose what happened to her to some of her co-workers,

she says in the article, and that they kind of said that it appears from the article that they had similar experiences or some of them did. So you're right. Like not holding that person accountable means that other people are going to be victims of his. So, yeah, that's a good point. But you know what, Rachel? It feeds into this idea that she brings up in the article, too, about how misogynistic men are. And it goes to your point that, you know, basically it's such a misogynistic country that we won't vote for a woman president. But also she talks a lot about how we have to have men rethink. It just doesn't say it in these exact terms, but masculinity.

And again, how misogynistic men are. And I go, listen, I know, I'm sorry, I know a lot of men. Obviously, I don't think men are misogynistic. There are some who are, I'm sure, but a vast majority of men are good men who love their moms, respect their moms, have sisters, love their sisters, have wives, love their wives, respect women thoroughly and cherish women, protect women and are not misogynistic. And again, that she tries to paint this broad brush of who men are in a really negative way. Yeah, I agree. in a really negative way is I think a real disservice in the conversation we just had yesterday about manliness and masculinity and how those two things meld together and an attack on that, that again, you need to be a pajama boy, you need to be feminine, you need to be a woman to be a man is absolute insanity. And these ideas actually penetrate, I think, in a culture in a profound

way, especially coming from someone like AOC. And we talked about this yesterday on the podcast. What it does is it creates men who women don't want to marry, that women don't want to date. And again, to be really clear, I'm not saying you want to date a misogynistic man. We don't want to date. I don't want you want to date a misogynistic man. That's we don't want to date. I don't want my daughters to be misogynist, but I'm saying to class of, you know, um, responses as women. I mean, what makes men and women interesting together is that they are different and complimentary. Yes. And, and this idea that all men are misogynist and they have to rethink their whole lives and their masculinity and their manliness is so,

it makes me so damn angry. And that some men might buy into that is really troubling, which again is why men are looking for other strong men and how to navigate today's culture. And she's one of the biggest purveyors of this, this, this, this, this toxic ideology around, you know, young men around young men who are actually good men. Yeah, I agree. And if somebody went to AOC or to me and said, you have to stop acting like a woman and your innate female instincts, like her doing Instagram videos about her makeup and her skincare, told her that that's toxic, she would be offended.

I mean, that's who she is. I will say this, though, that maybe some of the anger, I don't want to be her psychiatrist here or psychologist or counselor, but, you know, there are a lot of women, and she talked about that, that basically everyone that she worked with had been sexually assaulted, not necessarily by the same, that same person that assaulted her. But a lot of women have these experiences. And of course, it has to do with women being out socially in ways that maybe weren't acceptable a generation ago. There's also the hookup culture where there's a lot of confusion about what's acceptable, what's not? We saw that kind of confusion in the dating world when people jump into bed really quickly. And that can cause a lot of confusion. And some women are raped and others

are just jilted. And it's hard to make out what's what in that situation. She clearly feels like she was raped. I have no reason to not believe her. And that may also be why she's angry at men. Now that said, she talks about her new, her now fiance, and he wanted to be engaged to her. He told her about a year ago that he wanted to be engaged to her. And she was very ambivalent about it. She was kind of like, why, why do we want to do this? And she's very complimentary of him and says he's a great guy and whatnot, but she seems to be very ambivalent about marriage and settling down. And certainly we know she's not interested in having kids. Can I read you a quote, Sean,

to kind of give you- You can. Just read it to me. I want to read you just- Just give it to me. And this is a serious topic as she is talking about the sexual assault here, but this is kind of the stuff that it's like this, this self-care language, this activists, weird, meaningless thing. I can't make out what she's saying. There's a couple of quotes here. One, she says, so first she says, if the vast, this is a quote from her. If the vast majority of sexual assaults happened by a familiar person, the last thing you're going to want to do is throw someone in jail. So that's what we were talking about, Sean. We're like, why not? There's an intersection with the work of

abolition and healing and contending with the fact that we as people are capable of doing harm, but we are also capable of healing from harm. I don't know. Maybe I'm just old. It just seems like I don't know how to speak in that language. Yeah. No, I hear you. Can I just, maybe just on the assault front, there's, when we talk about rape, I just, and I've seen this when I was for 10 years as a prosecutor, there is someone who is nabbed at, you know, at gunpoint or knife point and, and, and they're forcibly sexually assaulted. There's also what's happening. And again, we all recall them all rape, but if someone is, you know, on a date and they're engaging, you know, with each other and, you know, someone goes further than what the other person wants, that's also considered a rape, right? It

has to be consensual, but there's a whole spectrum of things that happen. And maybe, you know, on that spectrum, she feels like she didn't want to call him out. I don't know that I'm grasping at my own experiences of kind of the different cases that I've handled. And, you know, again, she probably wasn't, again, nabbed at night after, you know, after work by this individual. There was probably some dating involved and he went further than she wanted. Right. And was assaulted and she was traumatized by it. There was probably some dating involved and he went further than she wanted, right? And was assaulted and she was traumatized by it. And that doesn't mean she's any less traumatized, but I do think that might feed into why she's not bringing this out.

Rachel, we're sitting here talking for a half an hour, 45 minutes about AOC. Number one for me is a little bit troubling. Again, we give her more props. She is a cultural figure, whether we like her ideas or not. She is a figure that just like, you know, you don't like talking about the Royals, Sean, but they are part of pop culture and we have to contend with this. Well, I think what, so again, why I think this conversation is important is the old adage of, you know, it's a wolf in sheep's clothing. She is a wolf in sheep's clothing. She is selling these ideas, these toxic, horrible, anti-freedom death ideas

to the American people with roses, sunshine, and unicorns as if they're all great. And what troubles me is that you have a press corps that is able to lift her up and shine a light on her ideas because they agree with those ideas. And again, she's an attractive woman, right? And she's young and she's articulate and she's a wildly leftist, progressive socialist. And the media loves that because they are too. But I look at Governor Kristi Noem when she was in the House, an attractive woman, married with kids, a rancher, wildly successful. They didn't give her near the attention they did AOC because she was a conservative. They could have propped Kristi Noem up like AOC, but instead they tried to tear Kristi down because she's a conservative.

down because she's a conservative and AOC, they'll lift up as this icon and give her, help her get this platform to talk to young people, to be the messenger that maybe they can't be themselves. And so this is scary stuff. It's important to recognize what she's doing, how she's communicating and the toxic ideology that she's helping feed to our young people, that young girls look up to her is troubling. That our kids know who she is, is troubling to me. We have to go like, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't look up to her. Halloween, Sean. Do you remember that? Paloma was AOC for Halloween. I think I objected to that. I objected to that. And my daughter, Paloma, looked just like AOC. It was so crazy. It was amazing.

And then she talked like her, too. Like, uh-huh, yeah, like she did the whole AOC thing with her. It was great. Yeah, it was awesome. She had this big pin that said, I heart socialism. It was awesome. It was awesome. Her shoes, AOC shoes, are in a museum.

What you brought up about Kristi Noem was a very interesting point because christine gnome is a truly remarkable figure her father died in a farming accident she pulled her family up um and her family business up from the brink um and and she is i mean her rope should be her her ranching rope should be in a museum it's far more of a amazing um up from the bootstrap story than AOCs, but she will never get the attention she deserves because of that. Wait right there. We're going to have more of that conversation next. At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner, however you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way.

And that's what running is all about. Run your way at newbalance.com slash running. So true. So true. And again, this is the leftist takeover of of culture of social media of real media um and this is what we contend with and i think what's important is to call her out for the lies um and the misinformation that she puts out there call her out for the the ideas that are so bad that she's selling to the American people and discuss it and talk about it and be empowered with the knowledge of what she's doing and fight back,

especially if you have young kids who might know who she is, you got to talk to them about, you don't know what her ideas are and what kind of life you have under those ideas, which we've done with our own kids. So listen, before we go, Rachel, I want to quickly, you mentioned that we're going to talk about Don Lemon. Okay. So I, first of all, I, my heart goes out to Essie Cup because I've had this happen to me. You and I were on outnumbered together and thank God you were the lucky guy on outnumbered that day because Harris Faulkner, this was years ago. I think I just had a baby. I was nursing. I don't know if it was Margarita or Valentina. I think it must've been Margarita. There's too many kids. I can't remember. I can't remember which one. I think it was Margarita.

No, no, no. It was Patrick. It was Patrick. I've had Patrick and you were the lucky guy. Patrick and you were the lucky guy. And, um, Harris Faulkner asked me something about Iran and literally my mind went blank. I didn't remember. I couldn't, it wasn't that I didn't know what the answer to her question was. It was like, there was nothing in my brain. Like my brain was empty. I think I just, you know, nursed every brain cell out of my brain or something. I don't know what happened there. And I said, she asked me about Iran and I go, Iran. And then the second time I said Iran and nothing came out, you tapped my knee because you were sitting next to me and you said, you must've known what was happening to me. And it was the best moment of our marriage. You said, Rachel, do you mind if I take this question? And so the viewers had

no idea. It seemed like you just wanted to answer the question instead of me. You were the awesomest husband in that moment. You 100% knew what happened to me that I had just, you know, my brain stopped working and you saved me on live TV. So what you're saying here is Don Lemon is right, that there is pregnancy brain. Because, and I don't know, like, I'm not, but what if I, but here's where he's wrong though, Sean. Yeah. If you had called me out on air, if I had had that moment and you had said, even if you'd answered the question on Iran, and then you came back after you answered the question on Iran and you said, honey, was that mommy brain? I would have been so pissed off at you. I mean, to embarrass me like that. It's like, let it go. It was rude. By the way, I don't think that SD Cup has a new baby.

So I don't know what happened there. A mommy brain does happen. But for Don Lemon to call her out, I thought on air was, I think was kind of sexist. And she, by the way, she, she, she seemed annoyed when he did it.

She did. She's like, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, like, yeah, mommy, mommy brain exists, but not cool to call her out on live TV like that. And other people are saying, Oh, let it go. You can be sure that if some male said that who was a Republican, that they would not even have the benefit of a debate about whether they were misogynist or not. Take, for example, if if you were on with Sean Hannity on a panel and you had a lapse of just can happen to all of us, you'd just like you're going to say something like,

I just forgot what I was going to say. It's like it's live TV. And Sean Hannity did what what Don Lemon did here and came back and said that to you on his panel, he would be absolutely skewered in the media about, again, now he's a misogynist. He hates women. He's basically mocking you, doesn't respect you. But Don Lemon, as a gay minority, can be on TV and can say these things. you know, as a, as a gay minority can be on TV and can, can say these things. And because he had, he holds the right cards. He has the right to offend his co-host and say that to her. I listen, it's, it's bogus.

And I listen, I, I do think it's demeaning. I think it's disrespectful of Don Lemon to do it. And he did listen, he had a good demeanor. He was joking a little bit about it, but I think that's, there's some things you just don't joke about because what he's jokingly, but he's embarrassing her in the process. Yeah. I think it was just rude. I don't think we should all be too overly sensitive. Like if Don Lemon did that to me, would I work with him the next day? Of course. Would I let it go? Yes. Um, I'm not an overly sensitive person like that. Do I think it was totally uncool? Yeah, I do. I'd say what we're doing here though. I'm like, Don, you set a certain set of standards by which we're all supposed to live by, you know, and how we talk to each other and how we deal with how sensitive we are, how we deal with race

and sexuality and all these issues. I didn't set up those rules. I don't want to live by your rules, but if you set those rules up, Don, and you don't live by them, we should probably call you out, which is exactly what we're doing. People can make mistakes on air. I'd give Don Lemon a lot more forgiveness if he wasn't trying to set up these radical rules for all of us to live by in regard to race and sex and sexual preference. He's doing that. And so when he doesn't abide by his own rules, I think it's fair to call him out and go, listen, that was rude. That wasn't very nice. And I'm not going to give you the grace that I would give Sean Hannity if he did that. I'm sorry. If Sean's listening to my podcast, I'm sure he is.

I don't mean to, it's a good example of a conservative who's on late night, primetime television. I would give Sean the grace, but I wouldn't give it to Don Lemon. And he doesn't deserve it because he's I mean, he's such an aggravator on these topics that when he does it himself, he should be called out. That's my take. we've covered a lot of pop culture on this talk I hate that you were saying that AOC is pop culture and Don Lemon's pop culture what's happening to culture can I ask you one last question because I've actually never asked you directly this question

I've always wanted to ask you this what was it like to serve with AOC when she was on the financial services committee with you what was she like so first of allOC when she was on the financial services committee with you? What was she like? So first of all, I never interacted with her on a personal level, but she was on financial services. So was I. And listen, I think it was actually troubling for it.

I get along with Maxine Waters, and I've said that a number of times. I like Maxine. I disagree with her politics. But Maxine is a historic figure on the committee. The first female African-American to chair financial services. Kudos to Maxine is a historic figure on the committee. The first, you know, female African-American to chair financial services. Kudos to Maxine. Again, I disagree with her policies. She's a nice person in my interaction with her, but none of the attention went to Maxine chairing the committee.

All the attention was on AOC and we don't get cameras when we do the organizing of a committee coming in to film the committee, but there were cameras in the room and everyone's filming as AOC comes in. And, you know, this attention grabbing exercise that she had on financial services was was, not Republican, but Democrat members of Congress, she felt like have not been very nice to her. Maybe that's why. Well, again, sometimes I think it can undermine the policy and the work that you're doing in a committee. And she's a low-ranking member. She's a freshman member of the committee. But I had one interaction with her about the Green New Deal. And she was talking about poverty and housing and how we don't have enough housing and how housing isn't affordable because financial services under that jurisdiction

is housing. And I'm like, listen, I agree. Housing is expensive and there's not enough housing stock, but in your Green New Deal, you're forcing everyone to get brand new windows in their homes and re-insulate their homes because you want to have us all comply with these standards in housing. What does that do to the cost of a house? It drives it up astronomically. So you're not bringing prices down to make it more affordable for more people. The Green New Deal is going to drive prices up. You're going to hurt people. You're going to throw more people out of a home, make homes unaffordable for people because of the green new deal. What did she say? She lost her mind and she came, she came after, after me, obviously she was wrong and didn't have a good answer and didn't address my point of the green new deal. But what was interesting, which I saw the power of social media, they clipped it, this exchange to look favorable to AOC, some left wing outlets.

And then they ran it on Twitter and Facebook. And, oh, God, I got a barrage back of what they perceived the interaction to be. Like AOC shamed or shamed or just wiped the floor with Sean Duffy. Wipe the floor with Sean Duffy. And it's interesting the power behind the social media accolades that she has and supporters she has. But the fascinating point is they didn't play the whole clip. They didn't play my allegation on what the Green New Deal does to the prices of homes. They just played her response, which was non-responsive to the point I was making. And again, it's how misinformation gets out there.

And misinformation on the left is totally acceptable. Well, Sean, you should feel very vindicated by what you said to just look to Europe, just look to Europe and to the United States right now with our 50% energy increase costs here in the U.S. and the darkest winter that Europe is ever going to face as they are going through massive energy costs increase. They're beholden to Russia. People aren't going to be able to keep their homes this winter. You're going to see what the Green New Deal does to people. And you are 100% winter. You're going to see what the Green New Deal does to people. And you are 100% right. And I don't care what social media says, Sean, you owned AOC. I did own her. If I do say so myself. But anyway, thank you for letting me talk for almost an hour on AOC and a little bit of Don Lemon, some of my favorite topics. I love that Rachel's in control.

I get to talk about AOC and the royal family. You'll get next week. I get next week. All right. Listen, I want to thank you all for joining us on our podcast from the kitchen table in a little deeper dive into AOC and her GQ article and Don Lemon offending many women across the country. If you like our podcast, you can rate, you can review, you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. We appreciate you joining us for maybe a cup of coffee or an ice cold beer or a glass of wine, or maybe you're out for your run right now, but thanks for partaking in our Duffy conversation on the issues that we think matter to you, but they're the ones that we talk about around our

own kitchen table. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, everybody. Bye.