Rep. Ocasio-Cortez Says Something Pretty Stupid About the Dakota Access Pipeline

Yesterday the CEO of Wells Fargo appeared before a House committee where he was grilled by progressive media darling Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

Her questioning, both juvenile and vapid, was an illustration of the left’s tactics in 2019.

After demanding to know why Wells Fargo was “financing the caging of children” (no, really) she went on to attack CEO Tim Sloan over his bank’s financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline:

“Hypothetically, if there was a leak from the Dakota Access pipeline, why shouldn’t Wells Fargo pay for the cleanup of it, since they paid for the construction of the pipeline itself?” she asked Sloan.

“Because we don’t operate the pipeline,” Sloan responded.

As he continued to answer, Ocasio-Cortez interrupted asking why Wells Fargo would finance a project left wing activists don’t like.

“Again, the reason that we were one of the 17 or 19 banks that financed that, was because our team reviewed the environmental impact,” Sloan replied. “And we concluded it was a risk we were willing to take.”

In other words, Wells Fargo simply doesn’t agree with the left’s opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The line of Ocasio-Cortez’s questioning is revealing. In years past a debate over something like a pipeline would center on its safety. Is it being built responsibly? Is it being sited safely? But the argument Ocasio-Cortez is making is explicitly political.

Ostensibly it’s about the safety of the pipeline. In reality, this ideological martinet is demanding to know why a private company would act in a way that upsets progressives.

Debating pipeline safety is fine. We should have that debate. But this isn’t that. This is a politician trying, albeit clumsily, to use her clout to enforce a political doctrine.

The left doesn’t like the oil industry, so they try to drive it into the ground by putting political pressure on those who provide financing to the industry.