Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) responded to a photo that went viral on Monday of a group of white teens in “Team Mitch” t-shirts surrounding, groping, and appearing to choke a cardboard cutout of her.
Tweeted AOC: “Hey @senatemajldr – these young men look like they work for you. 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? Thanks.”
Huffpost reports: ‘McConnell campaign spokesman Kevin Golden told HuffPost in an email that Team Mitch “in no way condones any aggressive, suggestive, or demeaning act toward life-sized cardboard cutouts of any gender.” He said the men are “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.”'
But Huffpost notes that some of the men also appear in a photo on the official Team Mitch Instagram account from Fancy Farm, Kentucky's biggest political picnic.
McConnell was blasted over the weekend for tweeting another photo from Fancy Farm of a set of gravestones next to a Team Mitch sign. One of the gravestones featured the name of his Democratic 2020 challenger, Amy McGrath.