AOC became ‘pariah’ among Democrats in Congress: book

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quickly emerged as a darling of progressive activists, but inside the halls of Congress she became a “pariah” among fellow Democrats, a new book claims.

Even before Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — widely known by her initials AOC — ascended to the House of Representatives in 2019, she rankled party leadership and progressive luminaries in the lower chamber, according to “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution,” out on Tuesday.

“While somebody like Obama wants to be seen as being all things to all people, Ocasio Cortez actually thinks she can be all things to all people while leading a political revolution,” author Ryan Grim wrote, per a preview of the tome published by the Daily Mail on Sunday. 

Grim recounts how the firebrand progressive — who unseated 10-term incumbent and Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley — upset top members of the party early on in her career.

In July 2018, the month after AOC beat Crowley in the Democratic primary, she met with then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — who urged the 28-year-old lefty to drop the slogan “Abolish ICE.”

Pelosi believed the phrase, targeting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had been “injected into political discourse by the Russians,” according to Grim, the Washington DC bureau chief for The Intercept.

He writes that: “AOC wondered. This is how the leader of the party thinks.”

Not long after Ocasio-Cortez won the general election that November, she roiled Democrats with some of her antics — including joining 150 climate activists for a sit-in at Pelosi’s office.

“She believed she could occupy the Speaker’s office and have Pelosi appreciate it,” Grim recounted of the episode.

Although in public Pelosi treaded carefully around Ocasio-Cortez, behind the scenes, she made the political neophyte’s life miserable, according to Grim.

“The amount of times she told me that … ‘I have protest signs older than you in my basement’ s—. Like yeah, but mine don’t collect dust,” Ocasio-Cortez once told Grim in a text, HuffPost previewed.

Ocasio-Cortez touts over 13.2 million followers on X and has a penchant for going viral with her far-left hot takes.

But Pelosi was not impressed.

“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi vented to The New York Times in 2019.

“But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got.”

Ocasio-Cortez, whose district covers parts of the Bronx and Queens, later called the slight “outright disrespectful”

Pelosi was not the only one peeved by Ocasio-Cortez, according to Grim.

Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) was “firmly usurped” by the Empire State up-and-comer from and this wasn’t “something (she) would quickly forgive,” he writes, according to the Mail.

At one point, Ocasio-Cortez and her then-chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti were summoned into a meeting with Jayapal who demanded she “keep her staff in line,” Grim writes.

Chakrabarti described the meeting as akin to Ocasio-Cortez being called into “the principal’s office.”

Shortly after she was sworn in on Jan. 3, 2019, Ocasio-Cortez, then 29, bucked her own party by voting against a rule mandating new tax cuts or entitlement spending be paid for.

She deemed the measure a “dark political maneuver” and “bad economics,” rankling many rank-and-file Democrats, according to Grim.

“The gap between AOC’s power outside the Capitol and the display of it on day one inside could hardly have been greater,” Grim wrote.

“To reshape that landscape she was rapidly sacrificing her relationships with colleagues.”

Grim, the former Washington DC bureau chief for HuffPost and the progressive co-host of the weekly Counterpoints show on YouTube, posited that Ocasio-Cortez arrogantly sought “to remake the system and to be thanked for doing it.”

“Ocasio-Cortez’s curse was her desire to win consensus that she was there to help, coupled with her radical politics,” he wrote.

Even when she tried to show her congressional colleagues “personal warmth,” it only made them “more suspicious” of her motives, Grim writes, according to the Mail.

They could “not accept and even have a working relationship with someone from a different party faction,” the book states.

“Grim writes: ‘”They simply didn’t believe that Ocasio-Cortex didn’t plan to oust them.”

Early on, one of her signature issues quickly became the so-called Green New Deal, a vague pitch for deep reforms to curtail the threat of climate change that has given Republicans ample fodder.

Evan Weber, co-founder of Sunrise Movement, had been allies with the congresswoman in her quest for climate change policy reform.

“I think we had done such a good job up until that point of massaging the language that there was a kind of arrogance of like: ‘We can actually appease everyone here’ instead of sticking to our guns and making a real choice about charting a different direction,” he told Grim in the book, per the Mail.

But Weber then zeroed in on a “frequently asked questions” sheet Ocasio-Cortez’s team compiled that he described as a “s–t show disaster” that gave her critics a “silver platter.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s former spokesperson Corbin Trent surmised that they had attempted “half a revolution” and that their staff got “too big for (their) britches,” Grim writes.

“If we weren’t going to move fast and break things, if you’re not trying to f–k with people, why are you f—ing with people?” he said.

Ocasio-Cortez also angered establishment Democrats by supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential primary, though she ultimately backed the nominee and eventual winner, President Biden, according to Grim.

The darling of the Democratic Socialists of America further made waves in September 2021 when she showed up to the Met Gala wearing a white dress with “Tax the Rich” in red letters splashed across her back.

Her appearance “infuriated every organization that had either been told she couldn’t attend their event or, more commonly, simply been ignored by her office,” Grim writes.

Since her early days that garnered great fanfare, Ocasio-Cortez has slowly begun working her way up the ladder of Democratic power in Congress.

She is now the vice ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, widely regarded as one of the most powerful panels in the lower chamber.

Ocasio-Cortez declined to challenge Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) or Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) in a primary.

Still, Grim concluded that Ocasio-Cortez, though outspoken in public, was crippled by being too “conflict averse.”

“This constant sense she’s failed at something. And she lets it in her head. She really takes that s–t to heart,” the book states.

The Post contacted Ocasio-Cortez’s office for comment.