WASHINGTON (AP) – Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s outrage over a Republican lawmaker’s verbal assault broadened into an extraordinary moment on the House floor Thursday as she and other Democrats assailed a sexist culture of “accepting violence and violent language against women” whose adherents include President Donald Trump.
A day after rejecting an offer of contrition from Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., for his language during this week’s confrontation on the Capitol steps, Ocasio-Cortez and her colleagues cast the incident as all-too-common behavior by men, including Trump and other Republicans.
“This issue is not about one incident,” said Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. “It is cultural. It is a culture of lack of impunity of accepting a violence and violent language against women, an entire structure of power that supports that.”
The remarkable outpouring, with several female lawmakers saying they’d routinely encountered such treatment over the years, came in an election year in which polls show women lean decisively against Trump, who has a history of mocking women. Trump was captured in a 2005 tape boasting about physically abusing them, and his disparagement of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has included calling her “crazy.”
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said she’d experienced “a lifetime of insults, racism and sexism.”