"Functionally Useless": AOC blasts senior Democrat resigned to Trump presidency

Worries over President Joe Biden's capacity to run a vigorous election campaign is casting a pall of dread over Democrats, with one senior lawmaker claiming that their colleagues have now "resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency." However, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was quick to rebuke the unnamed Democrat for their defeatist attitude.

"If you’re a ‘senior Democrat’ that feels this way, you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism,” she wrote on X. “This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people. Retire.”

The comments by the unnamed lawmaker were reported by Axios in an article describing the current state of an awkward, halting campaign by some Democrats to remove Biden from the ticket before the Democratic National Convention next month, an effort seemingly put on hold by the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Biden had just come out of a series of tense calls with groups of House Democrats and was struggling to stanch the flow of statements calling on him to step down when the shooting occurred.

"We're all just focused on expressing condolences ... and keeping our teams safe," one House Democrat who had been critical of Biden told Axios. Another House Democrat suggested that the post-shooting situation is too "chaotic" for internal leadership battles.

Ocasio-Cortez has continued to support Biden, urging the party to rally around him and focus on defeating Trump in November.