Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed Thursday that the leaked-photo shaming of Rep. Katie Hill “wouldn’t happen to male members” of Congress — but she may want to Google Texas Rep. Joe Barton and Anthony Weiner.
“This doesn’t happen to male members in the same way — revenge porn in this respect,” Ocasio-Cortez told Politico in a new interview.
“It’s horrific,” the freshman added.
Barton and Weiner forfeited their political careers after salacious, extra-marital photos surfaced, though some of Weiner’s materialized by his own hand, when he accidentally sent a crotch-shot to all 45,000 of his Twitter followers back in 2011.
AOC made no reference to either porn-shamed former pol when she spoke to Politico about “a major crime … being committed” against Hill.
Neither did AOC mention that Hill admitted to being in a year-long, polyamorous, three-way “throuple” with her now-estranged husband, Kenny Heslep, and a 22-year-old female campaign aide.
Likewise, there was no mention by AOC to a related House Ethics Committee investigation into whether Hill violated new #MeToo rules by sleeping with a male subordinate, an affair Hill denies.
AOC spent several minutes sitting and speaking with Hill after speaking to Politico on Thursday, before Hill delivered her bitter, defiant resignation speech on the House floor.
Last year, AOC slammed right-wing media sites for publishing a fake nude photo of her on Reddit forums and elsewhere. The photo purported to show AOC’s legs and feet soaking in a bathtub.
Online sleuths quickly debunked the snap, which actually depicted one of Weiner’s sexting partners, Sydney Leathers.
Weiner’s Congressional career derailed in 2011, after he accidentally tweeted out a similar aroused photo of himself — this time in grey briefs.
He’d intended to send it only to a single Twitter user, a then 21-year-old Seattle college student who was disgusted by the tawdry tweet.
In 2016, a selfie surfaced showing him laying in his whitey tighties, but clearly aroused, on his bed, as his then-toddler son lay alongside him.
Weiner admitted in 2017 that he had sexted for months with a girl he knew was 15; he was sentenced for that to 21 months in prison.
Pols were at odds later Thursday over AOC’s male-female, double standard claim.
“Obviously, several male Congressmen have had to leave this institution in the last few years for sexual misconduct and I don’t remember such an emotional outpouring,” noted GOP Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin.
Rep. Donna Shalala, (D-Fla.), insisted a double standard does still exist — but that Hill’s behavior was still “not appropriate.”
“There’s always been a double standard,” Shalala said.
“So what’s new? But we know that when we come into public life. We know the standards for us are going to be different. And that we have to reach to a higher point than the men do. But I won’t make any excuses for her. She admitted that what she did was not appropriate. I just feel sad for her.”