Former President Barack Obama thinks progressive-minded Democrats should drop the “defund the police” slogan—but also believes his party should further promote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who supports defunding the police. “You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,” Obama said in an interview on Snapchat’s “Good Luck America,” released Monday. He then went on to say that Ocasio-Cortez, an advocate of the policy, should’ve been given more speaking time at this year’s Democratic National Convention. “She speaks to a broad section of young people who are interested in what she has to say,” the former president conceded, “even if they don’t agree with everything she says.”
Ocasio-Cortez pushed back against those comments, tweeting Tuesday that “ppl brought this up for ages but it wasn’t until they said ‘defund’ that comfortable people started paying attn to brutality.” Some of her ideological allies in the party, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep-Elect Cori Bush (D-MO), and Kentucky State Rep. Charles Booker (D) also pushed back via Twitter.
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