August 10, 2018

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Not Here for Insulting, Bad-Faith Invites to “Debate”

Preach.

G. Ronald Lopez/ZUMA

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has had quite a busy summer in the two months since her stunning victory against 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in New York’s Democratic primary, stumping for Democratic candidates across the country.

Along with her new national profile has come an onslaught of conservative criticism portraying the 28-year-old, who is likely to become the youngest women ever elected to Congress, as naive and uninformed, in addition to being a terrifying preview of a socialist takeover of the Democratic Party. This week, conservative writer Ben Shapiro, who runs the Daily Wire, publicly challenged Ocasio-Cortez to a debate.

“Miss Ocasio-Cortez, I’m really excited that you’ve been elevated to that position and I would love to have a real conversation with you about the issues,” Shapiro said in a video message. In an insulting move, he even offered to contribute $10,000 to her campaign if she acquiesced. 

“Not only am I eager to discuss the issues with you, I’m willing to offer $10,000 to your campaign today for you to come on our Sunday special.”

On Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez responded by explaining the insulting and sexist nature of Shapiro’s invite.

Naturally, conservatives were not thrilled:

https://twitter.com/NoahPollak/status/1027740637607546881

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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