As a member of a younger generation savvy at the use of social media to spread her message, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez says a lot of words. The problem, however, is that so many of them simply aren’t true.
The 32-year-old New York socialist found herself openly mocked on Twitter – and hardly for the first time – after she mistakenly claimed in a social media video that the Keystone XL Pipeline was intended to transport natural gas out of the United States.
(Hint: it wasn’t.)
In her pitch for why pipelines are evil pollutants and should be banned in favor of bird-killing windmills and unaffordable solar roofs, AOC stated:
“When you look at Keystone XL, and when you look at a lot of these other pipelines, people say, ‘Oh, this is for energy, you know, independence in the United States. We actually already produce enough to power our own country, whether you agree with it or not.”
“A lot of these pipelines are being built so that the United States can export and sell natural gas abroad,” she continued. “And, you know, people make geopolitical arguments as to why that should be the case.”
In announcing her opposition to Pipeline 3, @AOC falsely claims it, along with the Keystone XL pipeline, were designed to export American natural gas abroad.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 16, 2021
(In fact both pipelines would bring Canadian oil into America.) pic.twitter.com/l45ujwnZbM
Of course, if one is going to decry the horrors of a pipeline, one should probably at least know what it’s being used for - which, in this case, would be crude oil, not natural gas. Oil, in fact, that would have been funneled from Canada into the U.S., not the other way around.
The project, greenlit under President Trump, was canceled by President Biden as one of his first acts in office last January, just before gas prices skyrocketed (up about 45 percent over last November) and inflation hit record-breaking highs.
Perhaps, if elected officials in charge of making decisions that affect these major life-impacting issues actually knew what they heck they were talking about, we wouldn’t be in this mess and people would be able to afford – heck, even find – turkeys in their grocers’ freezer section in time for Thanksgiving this year.
But with fools like AOC in Congress, it makes no sense to expect a miracle.