A week after former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw faced intense backlash for saying Latinos need to “work harder at assimilation,” a Fox Business Network guest fretted on-air that upstart Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is trying to “assimilate” Americans to “Latin American values.”
Appearing Tuesday morning on Varney & Co., frequent Fox guest Peter Morici—a U. Maryland professor who has written multiple op-eds for the network—called Ocasio-Cortez a “demagogue” and railed against her various proposals, including the “Green New Deal.”
“This is demagoguery, it's time she be called out,” he exclaimed. “The left is just using global warming, climate change, the environment as a stalking horse for socialism. They can't take away all your money and accomplish this, but they will. That's what this is about.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Asserting that the Democratic Party “no longer believes in core American values,” Morici told host Stuart Varney that “what you have in Ocasio-Cortez are Latin American values.”
“Instead of us assimilating them, they are assimilating us,” Morici declared. “And they want to bring the kind of socialism that destroyed Venezuela, and frankly Mexico, here.”
He continued: “You know, it isn't that we're going to become Venezuela, but we could easily become Mexico, and you won't be able to go outside your door without getting shot. And if you say, ‘Hey Peter, boy aren't you really going over the top,’ think about what the last eight or ten years have been like in Chicago.”
Since grabbing the spotlight last summer when she shockingly primaried 10-term Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley, the 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez has become an object of obsession by conservative media, and especially Fox. Recently, left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters for America found that Fox News’ primetime shows devoted outsized coverage to AOC last month, even while a government shutdown dominated most of January.
If Brokaw’s remarks are any indicator, Morici’s “assimilation” remarks will likely not be met with much criticism from Fox News personalities. While Brokaw quickly backpedaled and apologized for his remarks, a number of Fox figures—including Varney himself—defended the ex-NBC anchor.
