AOC blasts Trump for exploitative SOTU 'prizes' and claims he is giving out cash to black Americans at rallies

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has blasted Donald Trump for his State of the Union address, accusing the president of turning the event into a game show that uses people of color as props.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez, who did not attend the event in person out of protest, was asked during an Instagram live session for her thoughts on the president highlighting “so many people of colour” during the speech.

In response, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said that the president knew exactly what he was doing — and that the tactic was deployed at all shows a rift between the way America views the rights of white people and the rights of people of colour.

“Trump knows exactly what he’s doing,” she said. “Donald Trump has started giving out cash to black Americans at his rallies. This whole State of the Union was like a game show where he was handing out prizes and surprises and reality TV moments, and this is exactly his political agenda.”

The question posed to Ms Ocasio-Cortez referenced a specific portion of Mr Trump’s speech, in which he highlighted an African American mother and her daughter from Philadelphia, Stephanie and Janiyah Davis.

Janiyah, he said, is a fourth grade student who loves art and math, but has been assigned a low-performing school. Then, Mr Trump used their plight to attack Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf for vetoing a bill on school choice, and then told the child that she would be getting a scholarship so she can go to any school she would like.

It has been noted that his characterization of Mr Wolf’s veto is slightly or somewhat distorted. A report last year by the Philadelphia Inquirer found that Philadelphia schools are startlingly segregated even as other schools in surrounding public schools have become more integrated, in spite of school choice policies there that the Trump administration supports. During the State of the Union, Mr Trump was plugging a scholarship program that would give tax breaks to private organisations that set up scholarships for religious or private schools, which critics say would funnel money away from public school systems even as Republicans cheer the effort for improving choice.

In her response, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said that Mr Trump’s speech showed that “the rights of people of colour are constantly negotiated, and on the chopping block in politics in general”.

“When suddenly the rights of immigrants are controversial. Or issues pertaining to black Americans are controversial, but issues facing white Americans are not controversial, and they are bread and butter issues, this is what happens in our discourse,” she said. “And I think we need to be very careful about this because it is extraordinarily deliberate and it is being done with a very specific agenda.”