THE DEMOCRATS’ RISING NEW STAR: The Unserious Face of an Unserious Movement.

Speaking to a friendly Trevor Noah, [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she does not know the difference between a one-year and a ten-year budget; confused the recent increase in defense spending with the entire annual cost of the military; implied that the population of the United States was around 800 million strong; and, having been asked to defend her coveted $15 minimum wage, launched into a rambling and inscrutable diatribe about “private equity” firms that would have been a touch too harsh as a parody on South Park. If anything, she was worse this time than she had been during her appearance on Firing Line a few days earlier, on which newly revamped show she demonstrated her obliviousness to the fact that the United States economy exploded during the 1990s, to the manner in which unemployment numbers are calculated, and to even the most obvious facets of the Israel–Palestine question about which she has assured her supporters she is so passionate.

“It’s really weird!”

It is, yes. Especially given that, before her two interviews aired, Ocasio-Cortez had taken to exhibiting that jealous penchant for credentialism that so stains the world’s wannabe socialists, and to boasting about her intellectual prowess. At the beginning of July, she tweeted with self-satisfaction — and a noticeably premature use of the word “other” — that she was “Wondering how many other House Democrats have a degree in Economics like I do?”

Graduated fourth in her class at Boston University, which costs $72,618 annually to attend.