From the people who brought you Obama’s Tan Suit comes today’s latest political non-controversy: Republicans are upset that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is selling a $58 sweatshirt on her website.
On Wednesday, the New York Congresswoman unveiled a new line of merchandise on sale now in her official store. The collection makes reference to many of Ocasio-Cortez’s marquee policies, including her support for cancelling student debt and the Green New Deal, the latter of which would tackle the problem of climate change through unprecedented investments in infrastructure and clean-energy jobs.
But one piece of apparel particularly rankled conservatives: a gender-neutral “Tax the Rich” sweatshirt, which originally cost $65 before its price was reduced to $58, according to Newsweek. Critics on the right felt the sticker tag was hypocritical given her support for Democratic Socialism, a political philosophy shared by former 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. According to the Democratic Socialists of America website, its proponents’ goals are to push for “reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people.”
Brigitte Gabriel, founder and chairman of the right-wing, anti-Muslim group ACT for America, referred to the sweatshirt as “tone-deaf.” Former National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch claimed that Ocasio-Cortez was “railing against capitalism by literally engaging in it.” PragerU, a conservative media company which recently had a pair of anti-trans videos removed from YouTube for violating hate speech policies, snarkily tweeted that the House Representative “nailed it.”
“Elites telling working class people they’re fighting for them and then ripping them off is Marxism 101,” the organization said.
So many conservatives came out of the woodwork that even Dean Browning, a Republican candidate from Pennsylvania was recently outed for pretending to be a Black gay man on Twitter, decided to join in. “Seems like capitalism,” he tweeted.
But following the backlash, the Congresswoman retweeted a thread from Stephen Punwasi, a former self-described “mass market apparel designer” who explained why the item is more expensive than, say, some bargain bin sweats from Walmart. He noted that on Ocasio-Cortez’s website it states that the sweatshirt is made in the United States through union labor.
“Sounds about right,” Punwasi said. “That’s what it costs to pay everyone a decent wage along the way.”
Ocasio-Cortez chimed in, adding that conservatives were essentially “upset” because she isn’t using “slave-wage labor for merch that funds grassroots organizing.” “But what’s the difference between Trump’s merch and ours?” she wrote. “Ours is made in the US.”
“Oh, and by the way: Tax the Rich,” she added.
Those tweets, it must be noted, aren’t entirely true. Despite common claims that the Trump campaign’s signature “Make America Great Again” hats are made in China, a fact-check conducted by USA Today in September determined that the majority of the president’s official merchandise is made in the U.S., while those manufactured by third-party vendors typically are not. (Snopes and FactCheck.org came to the same conclusion.)
But for all the criticism of how much Ocasio-Cortez is asking for her merchandise, many of her prices are actually cheaper than Trump’s. On the president’s website, an average t-shirt retails for $30, while the Congresswoman charges just $27. A MAGA sweatshirt is almost the same cost as Ocasio-Cortez’s much-discussed “Tax the Rich” gear.
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