AOC calls out Mitch McConnell for pic of his supporters groping a cutout of her
A photo of seven young men in "Team Mitch" T-shirts kissing, choking, and groping a cardboard cutout of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez surfaced earlier this week, prompting a response from AOC herself.
The image, which originally appeared on Instagram with the caption "Break me off a piece of that," appears to be from an event in Fancy Farm, Kentucky called the Fancy Farm Picnic, according to HuffPost. This wasn't the first questionable image from the picnic, either: Mitch McConnell's social media team posted a photo of fake headstones -- including one for Amy McGrath, one of McConnell's Democratic opponents -- earlier in the day.
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"Hey @senatemajldr - these young men look like they work for you," AOC tweeted on Monday. "Just wanted to clarify: are you paying for young men to practice groping & choking members of Congress w/ your payroll, or is this just the standard culture of #TeamMitch?"
In a statement to HuffPost, McConnell's team said the men in the photo were "not campaign staff; they’re high schoolers, and it’s incredible that the national media has sought to once again paint a target on their backs rather than report real, and significant news in our country.”
Some of the men in the photo also appeared in another picture from the event, in which they're posing with blown-up heads of Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. That image appeared on McConnell's official campaign account.
Ocasio-Cortez has dealt with numerous racist and sexist attacks during her time as a public figure, including multiple attacks incorporating sexually violent imagery. Last month, ProPublica exposed a Facebook account run by current and former Border Patrol agents, which features -- among other atrocious things -- explicit, violent memes featuring doctored images of AOC.
Mashable has reached out to Mitch McConnell's team for comment.
Chloe was the shopping editor at Mashable. She was also previously a culture reporter. You can follow her on Twitter at @chloebryan.
