Donald Trump went on yet another bizarre rant on Truth Social following his controversial town hall hosted by CNN at a New Hampshire college.
“It’s really amazing to watch the head of CNN get absolutely lambasted for asking me to do a so-called Town Hall,” Mr Trump wrote on Sunday, referring to CNN CEO Chris Licht.
Mr Trump then went on to criticise Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s relationship.
“In all fairness, nobody had any problems with what he wanted to do until after the show started, when they quickly realized that Ms Collins was not exactly Barbara Walters, or even close,” he wrote before bashing progressive Democratic New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“That’s when the trouble from the Radical Left started. Neurotic little AOC with the bad looking boyfriend, went crazy,” Mr Trump added. “‘He owns CNN, he’s in their head,’ they screamed. CNN, take the GREAT RATINGS!”
Ms Ocasio-Cortez called the town hall “70 mins of steamrolled propaganda”.
Slamming CNN for agreeing to host Mr Trump, she added: “It was a disservice to democracy, but also a major harm for women, survivors, and people who rely on repro rights. CNN allowing sexual assault to be treated like a joke to an applauding audience is egregious. At this point it’s not about Trump – we know him. It’s about the programming.”
It’s not the first time that Republicans and conservatives have obsessed over Ms Ms Ocasio-Cortez or her partner, prompting Ms Ocasio-Cortez to call them “creepy weirdos” in December 2021.
During a trip to Florida, the Democrat was pictured having drinks with partner Riley Roberts, when a number of right-wingers appeared outraged at his choice of footwear.
Steve Cortes, a former adviser to Mr Trump, tweeted: “Her guy is showing his gross pale male feet in public (not at a pool/beach) with hideous sandals.”
“If Republicans are mad they can’t date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet. Ya creepy weirdos,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response.
“It’s starting to get old ignoring the very obvious, strange, and deranged sexual frustrations that underpin the Republican fixation on me, women, & LGBT+ people in general. These people clearly need therapy, won’t do it, and use politics as their outlet instead. It’s really weird,” she added.
In a video on her Instagram story in early January last year, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said, “So we recently went to Florida, where Republicans developed an obsession with Riley’s feet.”
“So give the people what they want!” she added, angling the camera down to reveal Mr Roberts’ shoes while they walked through a parking lot.
In 2019, Kurt Bardella, a former Republican House staffer, told The Guardian, “I think they’re looking for someone now that Hillary Clinton is gone from the day-to-day public eye”.
“Here is someone who has become the most visible figure in Congress in a short space of time. She is bombastic. This is a millennial female minority, the three things the Fox News audience seems to fear the most,” he added.
In 2021, far-right Arizona Republican Representative Paul Gosar published an anime video that depicted him assassinating AOC and preparing to kill President Joe Biden.
The video was gone from Twitter two days after being posted when it prompted widespread backlash.
Mr Gosar said at the time that the video was a “symbolic portrayal of a fight over immigration policy” adding that it “depicts the fight taking place” in the House over the “soul of America”.
“I do not espouse violence or harm towards any member of Congress or Mr Biden,” he said and added that the video was “not meant to depict any harm or violence against anyone portrayed in the anime”.
Mr Gosar’s siblings – Jennifer, Dave, and Tim Gosar – wrote in The Independent in November 2021 that their brother is “ridiculously unfit” to be in Congress and that he “needs to be stopped”.
Mr Gosar’s video showed several Republican lawmakers, including Mr Gosar, Georgia Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Colorado Rep Lauren Boebert, as the heroes in the Japanese anime show Attack on Titan – a programme about a small post-apocalyptic society living in a closed-off city in order to keep away giants referred to as Titans.
The face of Ms Ocasio-Cortez is superimposed on a Titan that is killed by Mr Gosar’s character, who also attacks a character with Mr Biden’s face.
“That man couldn’t add two single digits together if he tried,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez told her Instagram followers at the time.
“Gosar has nothing but tumbleweeds up there,” she added on Twitter.
In January of this year, Ms Ocasio-Cortez was spotted speaking to Mr Gosar during the marathon voting session to make California Republican Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House, something they both opposed.
