19 Clapbacks From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez That Bring The Fire

Newsmax's John Cardillo criticized her for growing up in a house in a "very nice area" and got her alma mater wrong. She quickly corrected him.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois warned about the Democratic Party moving "too far to the left" and losing Midwestern voters. Ocasio-Cortez had a different idea.

Ocasio-Cortez "pretty much" thanked Fox News for publicizing her platform for her.

When the GOP talked "crime, drugs, and terrorism" with regards to Democrats' calls to abolish ICE, Ocasio-Cortez warned of "their hysteria."

When right-wing sites attack her, she responds too — even if it means agreeing with them on some points.

She's happy to share the credit for what she proposes.

Conservative commenter Ben Shapiro had offered Ocasio-Cortez $10,000 to debate him, saying he'd donate the sum to her campaign if she agreed.

"I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions," Ocasio-Cortez responded.

Why respond with a single point when you can break it down into four parts? Ocasio-Cortez was attacked for having appeared in a photoshoot with fancy clothes; she then explained how photoshoots work.

Sometimes you need to embrace the "criticism" about you.

Ocasio-Cortez has stuck up for her fellow Democratic colleagues. Here she defended her fellow representatives and their ideas against the framing by Fox News that they're "radical."

"Try believing women + people of color," Ocasio-Cortez wrote to a critic who is neither. GOP strategist Arthur Schwartz posted that he talked with a member of Congress who said there were no intern events on the day that AOC made her comment original comment on being given directions to the wrong events on Capitol Hill. She clarified when it happened in her response.

Again, Ocasio-Cortez didn't engage in the attack directly by defending her clothes. Rather, she went further and addressed the underlying misogyny. A conservative media personality had attacked her for wearing nice clothes. She pointed out that whatever she wore wouldn't matter and then brought up the bigger problem when the original tweet was deleted.

Expanding from the criticisms of the Electoral College, Ocasio-Cortez addressed how rural, whiter parts of America are comparatively more represented.

A love of capitalization can be used in a clapback, too.

Just watch this one.

Rather than being boxed in to answer the questions her attackers pose, Ocasio-Cortez uses the attack to better illustrate her point.

Ocasio-Cortez has gone beyond Twitter responses, too, going so far as to take on a Times Square billboard that conservatives put up. She also goes beyond the attack to talk about underlying issues, like those paying for the ad in the first place.

When her own tweets are used against her, she doesn't back down. She doubles down on her point. Ted Cruz had tried to attack her using the croissant comment. "Here’s the answer: government-mandated FREE CROISSANTS FOR ALL," Cruz had written. "And we’ll just force the bakers to give all of their time for free."

"GOP taking every tweet so earnestly," she responded, "making my point for me."

The entire Democratic caucus is not equally up to speed on the art of the clapback — but nor do they necessarily need to be. Ocasio-Cortez comes under more fire than most. That hasn't stopped her from spreading her knowledge around to help others in Congress. She even gave a training in January on social media.

What all of this shows is that Ocasio-Cortez's tweets are here to stay — and they're something others on Capitol Hill seem to want to emulate.

They just need to make sure they're being true to themselves and their brand as a legislator, as AOC clearly is.