Chris Wallace on AOC's 'say no' to work call: 'Good luck with that'
Chris Wallace and Brian Kilmeade discuss Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling for American workers to 'just say no' to returning to work after the coronavirus shutdown
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Chris Wallace, host of “Fox News Sunday,” reacted on Thursday to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s argument that many Americans should protest economic insecurity by refusing to work after coronavirus-related restrictions are lifted, saying “good luck with that.”
Wallace made the comment on the “Brian Kilmeade Show” on Fox News Radio, adding that he thinks the freshman congresswoman’s statement came at the wrong time given the nation is dealing with the coronavirus outbreak and its impacts.
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"When we talk about this idea of reopening society, you know, only in America does the president -- when the president tweets about liberation -- does he mean go back to work. When we have this discussion about going back or reopening, I think a lot people should just say 'no' — we’re not going back to that,” Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said during an interview with Vice TV host Anand Giridharadas on Wednesday.
“We’re not going back to working 70-hour weeks just so that we could put food on the table and not even feel any sort of semblance of security in our lives.”
In response, Wallace noted that “we’re in the middle of the pandemic” and said it is not the “right time” to talk about an “economic revolution” when millions of people are unemployed as businesses are temporarily closed and people are forced to stay home in an attempt to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Wallace made the point shortly after the Labor Department reported another 4.4 million Americans filed for unemployment claims last week, bringing total job losses since the virus outbreak triggered widespread stay-at-home measures five weeks ago to more than 26 million.
“You can argue about how early we should get back to work from a safety point of view, but I think to start talking about an economic revolution … when businesses are going bankrupt and now 26 million people have filed for unemployment in the last five weeks, that people should hold out and not go back to work who don’t have any money because they want to get better work conditions and they say have a complete restructuring of the economy, good luck with that,” Wallace said.
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He went on to say that he thinks that “some of the points she makes about the economy are legitimate, but I don’t know that this is the right time to be making them and we just need to get ourselves back on our feet.”
“We don’t need to be starting to rediscover how this economy works,” Wallace continued.
Fox News’ Sam Dorman contributed to this report.
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