This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

An attempt to humiliate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as she was sworn in as the youngest ever US congresswoman has backfired impressively, prompting a huge outpouring of support for her.

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A 30-second video was posted by a Twitter user called AnonymousQ, showing Ocasio-Cortez dancing on the roof of a building while in college.

“Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is,” read the post, with the user, who has since deleted their account, claiming it was a “high school video of ‘Sandy’ Ocasio-Cortez”.

But instead of embarrassing Ocasio-Cortez, who was elected to represent New York’s 14th congressional district in November, the video has bolstered her popularity, with many people on social media praising her for being joyful and having fun.

Having already tweeted the riposte “You hate me coz you ain’t me, fellas,” Ocasio-Cortez on Friday afternoon posted a brand new short video of herself dancing outside her new congressional office.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous.



Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too! 💃🏽



Have a great weekend everyone :) pic.twitter.com/9y6ALOw4F6

In the lighthearted, 11-second clip, she dances and sings (or lip-syncs) along to a line from Edwin Starr’s classic Motown hit War: “What is it good for? Absolutely nothing,” pointing half playfully, half defiantly at the camera before bursting into laughter and flinging herself through the door of her office as if she had occupied her seat on Capitol Hill for years, not 24 hours.

With the clip, she wrote: “I hear the GOP [Republican party] thinks women dancing are scandalous. Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too! Have a great weekend everyone :)”

The original short clip from her student days was part of a longer video, made while she was an undergraduate at Boston University. In it, she and several other students dance on the rooftop of a university building to the song Lisztomania by Phoenix, in a mash-up of a dance from the Breakfast Club.

AnonymousQ (@AnonymousQ1776) Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is...

...High School video of “Sandy” Ocasio-Cortezpic.twitter.com/s723Vga9zF

Comedian Patton Oswalt joked: “She’ll never recover from the world seeing her … (watches video) … dancing adorably and having fun with her friends in high school?”

Reacting late on Thursday and early Friday to the first video, before Ocasio-Cortez posted her ripostes, the actor Russell Crowe said the dance was “fantastic”. He added: “The more politicians we have like AOC the sooner we’ll all be dancing.”

Ally Sheedy, who played Allison Reynolds in The Breakfast Club, and whose dance moves Ocasio-Cortez was imitating, said she was “pretty happy ’bout it”, later writing: “I love this #teamAOC.”

Zach Braff (@zachbraff) Imagine what a major ass-head one would have to be to think that video of @AOC dancing is anything but adorable and endearing and charming.

A Twitter account was soon created called “AOC Dances To Every Song”, setting her dance moves to hits such as Kids in America by Kim Wilde and Rebel Rebel by David Bowie.

The clips of the young congresswoman getting her groove on have been shared hundreds of thousands of times – emphasizing how bad politicians normally are at dancing, as highlighted by the British prime minister, Theresa May, and her departed foreign secretary and Brexit nemesis, Boris Johnson.

Since her election, Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly been the target of criticism from the right, including for her clothing choices.

Fox News also attacked her for claiming she wouldn’t be able to afford an apartment in Washington DC until her congressional salary started, saying Ocasio-Cortez was stretching the truth about how poor she was when she had $15,000 (£12,000) in savings. Her communications director later confirmed that Ocasio-Cortez, a former Bernie Sanders staffer who earned about $27,000 in 2017, had less than $7,000 in savings.

Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in the Democratic primary against incumbent Joe Crowley was one of the biggest upsets of the primary season. Ocasio-Cortez ran on a platform of Medicare for All and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) department. She has already begun a campaign to make climate change a defining issue for Congress.

She is also an adept social media user and has 1.74 million followers on Twitter and 1.2 million on Instagram, and regularly engages with them. She posted a video diary on Instagram documenting her first week in Washington.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s team demonstrated a slightly less deft touch with social media on Thursday, posting a picture on Instagram of his face looming over the phrase “The wall is coming”, written in the Game of Thrones font.

This is the second time this week the president has misappropriated the tagline from the hit television show to refer to his policies. On Wednesday, Trump posted a photograph of himself in a cabinet meeting with a poster on the table reading: “Sanctions are coming … November 5.”

While it is clear that someone on Trump’s team knows enough about Game of Thrones to know that there is, indeed, a wall in it, perhaps his team should watch a little more of the series before drawing any further parallels between Trump’s desired border wall and the ice wall in the HBO series.