S.E. Cupp: What has the age of Trump wrought? People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In the wake of his unprecedented campaign and unexpected e******n, the question always was: What would come after Donald Trump? What were the consequences of electing someone who was inexperienced, undeterred by and uninterested in facts and uncannily adept at whipping people into a frenzy by way of mere gesticulations and tweets?

Would Trump beget more Trumps?

Or would the pendulum swing violently back in the opposite direction, producing perhaps a return to thoughtful, accountable and intellectually rigorous leadership?

While we await what 2020 will deliver unto 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., we have our short-term answer in Congress: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In many ways, she is in the making of Trump himself, only plausible because of him, and only justified in comparison to him.

After all, it’s hard to imagine a political system more enamored and less scrutinized of a candidate-turned-politician as AOC, if Trump hadn’t made acceptable this particular form of politicking — one driven by feelings over facts and heavily reliant on a cult of personality. And that’s just what she’s done, with charisma, charm and impressive success.

Like Trump, she’s been caught repeatedly and unabashedly making stuff up. One example, telling PBS’s “Firing Line” that unemployment was low “because everyone has two jobs.” That’s no less egregious a factual error than when Trump insisted while campaigning that he’d “seen” unemployment numbers as high as 42% (when the official unemployment rate at the time was 5.1%).

She’s also been known, like Trump, to cherry-pick information from partisan sources and extrapolate false conclusions. Late last year, she tweeted a screenshot from an article in the left-leaning Nation magazine, comparing Pentagon spending to the cost of “Medicare for all.” People immediately pounced on her distortion of the data.

And, like Trump, she makes wild policy suggestions that have little footing in reality. Raising marginal tax rates on the last dollar earned by the wealthiest Americans to 70 percent is red meat for her base but is logistically implausible , much like Trump’s porterhouse of a suggestion to end birthright citizenship .
But possibly because of Trump, she’s learned that admitting mistakes is an irrelevant — elitist even! — exercise, so instead, she turns that notion on its head, insisting that being “morally right” can be more important than being factually right. It’s not Trump’s institution-undermining “f**e news” ploy, but a populist wink at the primacy of heart-versus-head politics.

She’s inarguably taking advantage of a new landscape that Trump helped establish, and for that you can h**e the game, but not the player.

One thing that importantly separates her from him: her earnestness. No one doubts she has a set of core beliefs and a principled commitment to them, even if her own party finds them impractical or politically perilous. And if Trump could totally disrupt the political establishment without a real belief in anything but himself, imagine how much further someone with actual values — and a sense of humor, to boot — could go.

Ocasio-Cortez is applying all the tactics of Trump, but with far more charm, likability and mainstream media support. This makes her a very real and significant phenomenon. And while it would be easy to dismiss her as naïve, unserious or even flimsy, there’s one thing she’s proved: Her composition is tailor-made for the politics of right now.
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Sarah Elizabeth (S.E.) Cupp is an American television host, political commentator, and writer as a conservative columnist for New York Daily News, contributing editor at Townhall Magazine, and a contributor for TheBlaze.

“Ocasio is being led by the nose. If she’s own her own, she simply makes stuff up while grinning from ear to ear and jumping up and down. Surely, that can’t be laid at Trumps door. What a school girlish act!” Carol Kelly.

Next in order: “That’s right now blame the dipstick on trump! When do u people take the blame for ur own foolishness! We need more trumps to drain the swamp! Ocassio plugs it up along with the rest of the demonrats! Wonttakeitanymore

Directly followed by: “Damn, you really do have it bad.
What we have here is a mutated form known as TDSAOCS. This hybrid syndrome is going to be the death of you and many others.
I am guessing it will turn terminal just after January, 2020...
MAGA BABY, RIP. Weasel.

Directly followed by: “Now I think I've heard everything! AOC is Trump's fault! It is just nothing short of amazing what the left will do to try to beat up on Trump. I don't know how the Dems could look any crazier. bylm1-Bernie

Almost impossible to tell the difference between each person's post. All filled with h**e, blindness, and ad hominem accented by their blindness to comprehend a simple article that did nothing of what they all perfectly chorused together in their party echo chamber.

Sorry, but S.E. Cupp is considered an insightful mainstream conservative writer and commentator. Her creds are impeccable, and she is certainly no part of "the left" trying to beat up on Trump.

"Sarah Elizabeth (S.E.) Cupp is an American television host, political commentator, and writer as a conservative columnist for New York Daily News, contributing editor at Townhall Magazine, and a contributor for TheBlaze."