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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

AOC claims Trump's 'xenophobic COVID response' making people 'too scared' to go to hospital

By Sam Dorman Fox News
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for swift government action to protect Americans from coronavirus pandemic Video

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for swift government action to protect Americans from coronavirus pandemic

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins Bret Baier on 'Special Report' to discuss the U.S. response to the coronavirus crisis and her support for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Saturday blamed President Trump's "xenophobic COVID response" for people refusing to go to hospitals.

"Corona, Queens is the most heavily COVID-impacted zip code in America. I can tell you 1st hand that many ppl are too scared to go to the hospital & continue to work bc of Trump’s xenophobic COVID response," she tweeted.

The New York congresswoman claimed that Trump was xenophobic for, among other things, allegedly targeting the Asian community in his rhetoric and television ads. She added that the lack of translations for public health mandates was also a form of xenophobia. Other issues she listed related to the way the administration handled migrants.

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Democrats and media figures have criticized Trump for repeatedly using the phrase "Chinese virus," indicating that it could encourage racism against Asian-Americans.

Ocasio-Cortez also referenced an ad that accused former Vice President Joe Biden of defending China. The video included a brief image of Biden on stage with Gary Locke, an Asian-American and former ambassador to China.

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"Gary Locke is as American as the day is long," tweeted Andrew Yang, a former 2020 presidential candidate. "Trump rewriting history as if he effectively responded to the virus is utter garbage."

The Trump campaign later defended the ad, saying that the picture came from Biden's visit to China in 2013. "The shot with the flags specifically places Biden in Beijing in 2013. It’s for a reason. That’s the Hunter Biden trip," Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, tweeted this week. He was referring to a trip that Trump used as a basis for defending his interest in investigating the younger Biden.

Ocasio-Cortez previously caught attention for claiming that people weren't eating Chinese food during the pandemic due to racism.

CLICK HERE TO GET COMPLETE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE

"Honestly, it sounds almost so silly to say, but there's a lot of restaurants that are feeling the pain of racism, where people are literally not patroning Chinese restaurants, they're not patroning Asian restaurants because of just straight-up racism around the coronavirus," she said during an Instagram Live session in March.

On Saturday, she also suggested it was xenophobic for Trump to block illegal immigrants from receiving coronavirus relief, and for conditioning immigrants' admission into the U.S. on their likelihood to use government assistance. Trump, she argued, enacted the public charge rule, which she claimed "punishes immigrants for seeking medical [attention], food assistance."