A video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing in college resurfaced on Twitter Thursday, drawing both ire and praise from critics and supporters alike.
The Twitter account, @AnononymousQ1776, apparently tried to discredit Ocasio-Cortez by posting the video clip and calling her a “clueless nitwit.” The account and tweet have since been taken down, but that hasn’t stopped thousands of Twitter users from coming to Ocasio-Cortez’s defense.
“I keep rewatching the @AOC dancing video and can’t find the problem. She’s... having fun? Has friends? Likes music?,” said Time Magazine journalist Charlotte Alter in a tweet.
Ocasio-Cortez responded Friday with a short clip on Twitter of her dancing to "War" by Edwin Starr. "I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous. Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too!" she said in a tweet.
The full video was originally shared by Boston University on YouTube in 2010, where Ocasio-Cortez studied economics and international relations and graduated in 2011. A blog post published by the university at the time explained that a group of students, many from the university’s multicultural center, created the video to try to “bring people together.” It took them about 24 hours to produce the video, including planning, shooting and editing, the post said.
Ocasio-Cortez was credited as an actor in the university’s YouTube video using the name “Sandy,” a nickname she sometimes went by in the past, according to USA Today.
The students were inspired by an international trend at the time of making music videos to the band Phoenix’s song “Lisztomania.” The original video that inspired the trend was published on YouTube in 2009 and showed a mashup of 80’s movie stars, known as the “Brat Pack,” dancing to the song.
One of the Brat Pack members, actress Molly Ringwald, tweeted her support for Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday night, saying, “That’s it, Alexandria you’re in the club!” with two heart emojis.
Twenty-nine-year-old Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described democratic socialist, was sworn into the House of Representatives on Thursday as the representative for New York’s 14th District. She is already well known around the Capitol, and on her social media accounts, by the nickname “AOC.”
She shocked many in New York politics, including herself, when she unexpectedly defeated 10-term Rep. Joe Crowley in New York's Democratic congressional primary last spring.
