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Meltdown: Liberal Media Triggered By Conservative Site Mocking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez In Satire Video

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  July 26, 2018 1:55 PM

There are some things liberals do that just make you want to smash your face against the desk. That goes doubly for their allies in the media. Allie Beth Stuckey of Conservative Review decided to have a little fun with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the insurgent left-wing Democrat (democratic socialist actually), who delivered the progressive wing their own Eric Cantor moment, clipping top Democrat Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) in a primary challenge. Sen. Bernie Sanders has some good company. She too wants free stuff for all the people, and she wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She’s been called the future of the Democratic Party, but her July 13 interview with PBS’ Margaret Hoover, who hosts the revamped Firing Line of William F. Buckley lore, provided a lot of fodder, notable because she didn’t know what she was talking about. 

On the Israel-Palestinian conflict, she admitted to not being an expert, along with supporting a two-state solution, which she shied away from three days after the PBS interview. Oh, and unemployment is low because everyone is working two jobs. We’ll get to that in a second, but Stuckey decided to do a mock interview to parody the PBS appearance. It’s been done before, but it went viral, breaking over 1 million views. Apparently, not everyone was able to see what was blatantly obvious, providing yet another episode that the liberal media totally embarrassed itself. Also, Washington Post, you should know better, c’mon, guys:

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the congressional candidate from New York whose democratic socialist campaign has stuck a lightning bolt into the world of Democratic politics, appeared to give bizarre answers in a 2½-minute video that was staged as an interview with conservative commentator Allie Stuckey on the site CRTV. Ocasio-Cortez shook her head “no,” when Stuckey asked if she had any knowledge about how the political system worked and seemed to imply that Venezuela was in the Middle East and was a model of socialism.

But the video did not depict a real interview, despite its caption: “Allie *grills* congressional hopeful and progressive it girl ‘Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ on her socialist agenda and knowledge of government … or lack thereof.” Instead, it used heavily edited footage from an interview Ocasio-Cortez did with PBS earlier this month spliced to appear as answers to questions read by Stuckey.

After an outcry, the Facebook page for Stuckey’s show, which the social media giant has given an informal imprimatur in the form of a blue verification check mark, was updated to note that the video was satire and include a reference to the original PBS show. But the fact that the video traveled so widely — and for some, apparently believably — has served as another example of how misleading information continues to thrive in the fast-paced flow of information online despite Facebook’s promise to better weed it out.

Misinformation is not completely outlawed according to the company’s community guidelines — an issue that has caused plenty of discussion recently — and neither, of course, is satire, but the video appeared to fall into a confusing gap between the two before it was labeled. Facebook’s moderators can down-rank false information to slow its spread and are able to add a “satire” categorization in other instances, but the fact that the video traveled so widely before being updated by CRTV shows the speed with which information can move across the service before any action is taken.

And to many skeptical eyes, the video was obviously fishy and staged. But it appeared to be taken seriously after it was shared on some conservative-leaning pages on Facebook, and was viewed about 1 million times before the company posted the clarification to its caption. 

That’s because it was satire, you morons! The Daily Show does it, something that was made clear by some on social media when the faux outrage occurred over this video. A producer at Vox even decided to put his True Detective hat on, declaring that it only took him a minute to determine that the video was not real. It only took him a minute. 

Luckily, there are other media figures that called out this absurd meltdown, while others noted that perhaps some on the Left were slow to figure out CRTV’s video was satire because they never watched Ocasio-Cortez’s PBS interview. The democratic socialist then took to social media saying the GOP is so scared of her that they’re making phony videos because we can’t deal with reality anymore. Well, the reality is we’re all laughing at you. Yes, you’ll win your election, but don’t expect to shake things up when you get to D.C; some Democrats are making that known right now. But your ideas are not in reality, lady. Even the fact checkers called you out on your unemployment remarks. And Ocasio-Cortez supposedly has a degree in economics. 

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Update: Guess we can addBuzzfeed into the confederacy of humorless liberals.