Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Responds to Ted Cruz's name-calling

 

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to Sen. Ted Cruz calling her a "parasite" during a recent appearance on Fox News

• Ocasio-Cortez criticized Cruz for looking down on working-class jobs and highlighted her own working-class background

• Cruz's comments followed Ocasio-Cortez's remarks about wealth inequality on the It's Open with Ilana Glazer podcast

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is defending working-class people after Sen. Ted Cruz called her a "parasite sucking on the taxpayer" for her take on the "economic elite."

After Ocasio-Cortez, 36, voiced her stance on billionaires during an appearance on the May 7 episode of the It's Open with Ilana Glazerpodcast,the Texas Republican, 55, called Ocasio-Cortez a “parasite sucking on the taxpayer” during a Tuesday, May 12, appearance on Fox News.

Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat representing New York's 14th congressional district, was then asked to respond to his comments by reporter Pablo Manríquez later that day.

"It's not a secret the disdain that Ted Cruz has for people who work working-class jobs," the former waitress and bartender said in a Tuesday clip now going viral on X.

Sen. Ted Cruz arrives for a Senate Republican luncheon on Thursday, February 17, 2022<br>Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty

"It's not a secret what he thinks of the waitresses, the line cooks—he thinks we're less than him," she added. "He thinks that because he has a Harvard degree and never scrubbed a table that it makes him better than someone who's actually had to work for a living.""I think it's funny that he's been taking a government paycheck for 23 years but has the audacity to criticize someone who has come from a family that had to work their way up and earn their place here," Ocasio-Cortez said.

His comments, however, are something she said she doesn't take personally.

"I'm okay with it," she said.

During her It's Open with Ilana Glazer appearance on May 7, Ocasio-Cortez said that billionaires and corporations — whom she categorized as the "economic elite" — have a "certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned."

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a news conference on Wednesday, March 25, 2026<br>Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty

“You can't earn a billion dollars,” the New York Democrat said. "You just can't earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they're worth, but you can't earn that, right?”