Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared Marjorie Taylor Greene the real leader of the House Republican caucus as she painted Kevin McCarthy as a puppet.
The New York congresswoman sat down with former White House press secretary Jen Psaki on her MSNBC programme on Sunday morning.
Asked whether she thinks Mr McCarthy is “actually running” the House Republican caucus, Ms Ocasio-Cortez did not mince her words.
“He’s not,” she said. “I think you’ve got Marjorie Taylor Greene running the caucus.
“I mean, and she makes very common public statements to that effect. Every time something irks her, she communicates that McCarthy is doing her bidding. And I think that this is something that is quite clear.”
Ms Ocasio-Cortez went on to say Mr McCarthy “brought himself up a creek without a paddle” when he opted to back the far-right portion of his caucus over the more moderate side.
“I think that Speaker McCarthy is stuck between having to please the most racist and heinous elements of his party with having to maintain a majority, and he is choosing to side with the extremists,” she said.
The interview with Ms Psaki touched on a range of topics, including the legal battle over the widely-used abortion drug mifepristone.
While the Supreme Court upheld the FDA’s approval of the drug in a ruling on Friday, the case is far from over as it heads back to an appeals court.
Asked how bad she thinks the wider battle over abortion rights could get, as Republicans ramp back efforts to ban the procedure at the state level following the overturning of Roe v Wade, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said: “I think we’re in an extremely serious moment.
“I believe that the Republican party is not starting with Roe, they will not stop at Roe, they will not stop just at women’s rights.
“I believe that what we are seeing is a concerted rollback of civil liberties... Our right to privacy. Our right to bodily autonomy. Our right to marry whomever we wish to marry. All of this is at risk.”
Ms Ocasio-Cortez also addressed Fox News’ $787.5bn settlement with Dominion Voting Systems last week and accused network hosts including Tucker Carlson of inciting violence before the January 6 Capitol riot.
She said the case - in which Dominion accused Fox of defamation for airing false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election - highlights a much larger problem in the media.
“We have very real issues with what is permissible on air,” she said. “We saw that with Jan 6 and we saw that in the lead up to Jan 6 and how we navigate questions - not just a freedom of speech but also accountability for incitement of violence. This is the line that we have to really explore through law as well.”
She went on to call for media organisations to be held accountable for inciting violence with their content.
“I believe that when it comes to broadcast television, like Fox News, these are subject to federal law, federal regulation in terms of what’s allowed on air and what isn’t,” she said.
“When you look at what Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence — very clearly incitement of violence. And that is the line that we have to be willing to contend with.”
