NEW YORK—This is a progressive city.
Many liberal terms you may have heard nestle and breed in this packed and congested eight-million-strong metropolis. Sanctuary city, gun control, and climate change live here.
And like the word progressive, it progresses the abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement movement, universal health care, and the socialist Green New Deal—proposed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The Big Apple gives radio host Rich Valdes plenty to talk about on his podcast This is America, 17 floors above Madison Square Garden. And looking down from up there, he has quite the view: “a cesspool of corruption.”
Valdes covers contemporary issues, with Gen-Xers as his target audience, giving them the news in a “digestible” way.
But now—besides pronouncing the grim agenda of socialism on his show—the Republican from New Jersey said he is exploring a campaign to give people a voice to respond to Democratic Socialist Ocasio-Cortez as she represents the 14th District.
Reaching Out for Debate
Valdes has been sending invitations to the young Democratic Socialist to go on his show for a debate, but his invitations have been left unanswered.
Most recently, the mainstream media has given Valdes airtime after he was presented with an opportunity to speak with Ocasio-Cortez at a National Puerto Rican Day Parade and extend her another invitation for a debate. Valdes claimed that the representative then “ran away.”
After @RepMaloney (whom I’d never met prior) stopped to say hello to @curtissliwa & me, I saw @RepAOC leave the “todos juntos” banner to greet people. So I quickly walked over to say hello & remind her of my invitation to debate the issues on my show but she ran across the street pic.twitter.com/tpg8K8WDdI
— Rich Valdes ???????? (@RichValdes) June 11, 2019
“I did not approach with a podium under each arm. I wasn’t going to set them up, stop the parade: let’s go, right here, right now, capitalism, socialism!” Valdes told NTD in an interview. “I was just gonna remind her that I’ve tried to reach out to her office. Maybe somebody here can give me a card—let’s make this happen.”
After the media reported the incident, the representative’s spokesperson Corbin Trent wrote a hostile tweet to Valdes.
“Yo, @RichValdes what in the actual **** makes you think you’re entitled to a debate with AOC?,” wrote Trent, then calling the radio host a stalker. The tweet was later deleted.
“The idea that someone ought to be ‘entitled’ to speak with a congressperson is clearly emblematic of the problem that’s going on in her camp,” said Valdes on This is America. “Being a member of congress or any part of the government is not royalty—including the White House.
“Last I checked, we rejected the monarchy.”
‘If You’re Not in the Ring, You Lose the Fight’
Although the public servant dodged Valdes, he did not hesitate to break the story on his show.
He has stressed that if people want to stop socialist policies and backwards thinking, they need to do something—get involved in politics, education, media, or radio.
“You’ve seen this with Mao Zedong; we’ve seen it with Fidel Castro; we’ve seen it with Joseph Stalin—it was their way or the highway … without debate, where are we?” Valdes told NTD.
He added that much of the 14th District doesn’t feel well represented by the congresswoman for her absence in the district and her focus on climate change, among other things.
A few days before Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Green New Deal, an MS-13 gang member allegedly killed a man in her district in broad daylight. The gang member was found to be an illegal immigrant. The congresswoman supports the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Regardless of whether Valdes runs against the congresswoman or not, the show goes on.
“I’m just trying to create contrast, to make a point: a point that we can disagree on things, but we need to agree that we love America, because you either love America, or you don’t.”
