At a "Fight Oligarchy" event in Folsom, California on Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) spoke about the influence of lobbyists in Congress.
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00:00When I first got to Congress, I was genuinely shocked by how the place worked, even having
00:09run against dark money in the first place.
00:13The everyday influence of corruption and dark money was astonishing.
00:19We have somehow conditioned ourselves in Congress to believe that it's normal for elected representatives
00:27who swear an oath to the American people to day trade individual stock and make millions
00:36with the sensitive information that we are entrusted with for the purpose of governing.
00:43How can anyone possibly make an objective vote on health care, energy or war when their personal
00:51money is tied up in pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas companies or defense company stocks?
01:01You can't.
01:02And we saw this play out this week with Trump's corrupt and disastrous tariff scheme.
01:10We can see now that his tariff shuffle didn't have anything to do with manufacturing like
01:16they claimed.
01:17I hope we recognize now that it was all about manipulating the markets so that he could quietly
01:25enrich his friends who bought the dip before revising, reversing it all in the morning.
01:31Folsom, what I'm about to say is a matter of fact.
01:40Donald Trump is a criminal.
01:44He was found guilty of 34 felony counts of fraud, liable for sexual abuse.
01:52Of course he is lying and manipulating the stock market too.
01:57And if Donald Trump wants to find the rapists and criminals in this country, he needs to look
02:03in a mirror today.
02:16And to be clear, I don't care what party you are, Democrat or Republican, it doesn't matter
02:23how powerful one is or what position they hold, members of Congress holding and trading individual
02:30stock is wrong, it is corrosive, it is destructive and it needs to be banned.
02:37You know, just this year, earlier this year, I was named to the Energy and Commerce Committee
02:47in the House of Representatives.
02:50And this is one of the most powerful committees in all of Congress.
02:56It oversees two-thirds of the American economy.
03:00Health care, manufacturing, trade, energy, communications, you name it.
03:06And for years, lobbyists fought to keep me off of this committee.
03:11Because they don't like what they don't control.
03:15And an interesting thing happened on the day that it was announced that I would be assigned
03:22to the committee.
03:23Our phones rang off the hook and my office's inboxes were flooded by every corporate lobbyist
03:31under the sun.
03:32All of a sudden, they wanted to be best friends.
03:37But you know what, Folsom?
03:39Because of your support.
03:42Because of gatherings like here today.
03:44Because you allow me to not take a dime in corporate money.
03:49You free me to say no.
03:52You free me to fight for Medicare for all people.
03:58You free me to fight for a renewable energy economy.
04:04But not everyone is so lucky.
04:07I've seen firsthand how these groups bully and pressure members of Congress.
04:12They threaten to take their money away or to spend it against them if they don't do what
04:17they want.
04:18And what they want is for our lives to be as expensive as possible on the lowest possible
04:25wage.
04:26What they want is for as many people to be exploited in America as possible.
04:33And it trickles down to how life feels for working people today.
04:39So I want us to understand that this constant pressure that we feel in our lives, of the water
04:45rising up to our throats, the impossibility to afford anything easily, the fear of speaking
04:52up or being who we are in public, the bitter divisions driven more by online algorithms than
04:59the truth, the crumbling of our rights and protections.
05:04Understand that this right now is what it feels like to be governed by billionaires.
05:13Not someday, but right now.
05:15Not someday, but right now.