Former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka said Thursday that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) Green New Deal is the type of “socialism” Joseph Stalin once “dreamt about.”
“You know what the biggest threat to America is? Not socialism in Moscow, socialism here in America,” Gorka said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., according to video from Media Matters for America.
{mosads}He later claimed that American millennials’ desire for socialism was one of the reasons why Ocasio-Cortez introduced far-reaching legislation intended to combat climate change.
“That is why Ocasio-Cortez has introduced the Green New Deal, which is, which is — remember this one, use it — it’s a watermelon,” Gorka said. “Green on the outside, deep, deep red communist on the inside.”
“They want to take your pickup truck, they want to rebuild your home, they want to take away your hamburgers. This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved,” he continued, referring to the Russian who led the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952.
Gorka went on to tell conference attendees that they are “on the front lines of the war against communism coming back to America under the guise of democratic socialism.”
Ocasio-Cortez identifies herself as a democratic socialist.
The Green New Deal, a resolution introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), calls for the federal government to make sweeping reforms in order to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and create “good, high-wage jobs.”
Progressives have praised the legislation as a bold initiative to combat the consequences of climate change. But many Republicans as well as many moderates have criticized the bill, pointing to its high costs.
Gorka, who left the White House in August 2017, has taken aim at Ocasio-Cortez before. In November, he tweeted that the soon-to-be congresswoman was “an insult to intelligent and empathetic humans everywhere.”
Ocasio-Cortez shot back that she was “pretty sure we’re on the right side of history if you’re my opposition.”