Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) slammed white supremacist Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on Sunday after he snidely went after her for calling detention facilities for immigrant children in the U.S. “concentration camps.”
King piously counseled her to accept an open invitation from a Holocaust remembrance group to visit Auschwitz, as he said he had.
“I went with a deep understanding of the Shoah and had a profound personal experience,” he tweeted to Ocasio-Cortez.
One problem, the congresswoman snapped back: “The last time you went on this trip it was reported that you also met [with] fringe Austrian neo-Nazi groups to talk shop.”
King reportedly met with a group founded by a former Nazi SS officer last year while visiting Europe on a trip paid for by From the Depths, the same group that has invited Ocasio-Cortez to tour Auschwitz.
The Anti-Defamation League demanded afterward that GOP leadership condemn King and remove him from his chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee. He was finally stripped of his positions on the judiciary and the agriculture committees earlier this year, after he asked during a New York Times interview what was offensive about white supremacy.
Ocasio-Cortez added that she has “absolutely zero patience for completely certified, card-carrying and flag-waving racists. ... They can take their little tiki torches somewhere else.”
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) also got caught in Ocasio-Cortez’s takedown. “Perhaps you should come collect your colleague before more members of your caucus start saying the quiet parts loud,” she wrote.
King has not replied to Ocasio-Cortez’s tweets.
But several Twitter users joined the congresswoman in attacking him, and they supported her view that child detention sites are comparable to concentration camps.