Like most liberal celebrities, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) doesn’t always play by the rules.
A Tesla reportedly belonging to the Democrat congresswoman was spotted being parked illegally outside a Whole Foods in Washington, D.C.
The white Tesla Model 3 was photographed with New York plates and a Congressional parking pass in a no-parking zone near Ocasio-Cortez’s D.C. apartment on May 14, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Sources told the Free Beacon that the congresswoman had been seen driving a white Tesla in the neighborhood. The publication also cited a congress member, who chose to remain anonymous, seeing her drive the vehicle into a House parking lot on Capitol hill.
AOC announced that she bought the Tesla in October 2020. Her reason for buying the electric car was to help her commute safely from New York to Washington D.C., where she works as a congresswoman. Because she did not want to take public transportation during the COVID-19 pandemic, she chose to put her money into an electric vehicle that would not punish the environment.
“If AOC paid the same tax rates as I do, that would eat up about 43% of her after-tax income (assuming that’s the low-end Model 3: MSRP $39,490). Congress makes $174,000/yr. Pretax.,” former Fox News host Eric Bolling said.
The car blog Tire Meets Road has speculated that AOC most likely owns a Long Range variant of the Tesla Model 3 as it is one of the only electric vehicle models capable of making the trip from New York to D.C. and back on a single charge. The model has a retail price of between $46,000 and $59,000.
If the Tesla did, in fact, belong to Ocasio-Cortez and if she did park the vehicle illegally while visiting a Whole Foods store, it would undermine her credibility and political identity as a socialist. She once said billionaires should not exist while Americans live in poverty. Tesla is run by billionaire Elon Musk while Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, which is led by Jeff Bezos.
In fact, back in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez criticized Tesla during a climate change town hall hosted by Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“For far too long, we gave money to Tesla, we gave money to a ton of people and we got no return on our investment that the public made in creating technologies, and it’s about time we get our due because it’s the public that funded and financed a lot of innovative technologies,” she said.
It is an interesting irony that AOC’s car was spotted outside Whole Foods after she famously thwarted its parent company Amazon’s attempt to build a new headquarters in New York City.
Back in 2019, Ocasio-Cortez spearheaded a campaign that ultimately forced Amazon to cancel its plans to build a second headquarters in Queens. After left-wing activists successfully scuttled the proposed headquarters, which would have brought more than 25,000 jobs to the area, the congresswoman declared victory, saying “anything is possible.”
Sourced: AWM, WashingtonFreeBeacon
