A group of young men in “Team Mitch” campaign shirts supporting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at an annual political picnic in Kentucky were captured in a photo smiling as one of them pretended to strangle a cardboard cutout of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Social media accounts of some of the men identified by Twitter users were taken down — or shut down by Twitter for inappropriate postings — by Monday. But at least one Instagram account of a local Republican backer who also attended the picnic had it up late in the day. It was also later removed.

Shot Shot/wmarshallky/Twitter

Ocasio-Cortez slammed back at the Senate majority leader after seeing the post, asking if McConnell is “paying for young men to practice groping & choking members of Congress w/ your payroll, or is this just the standard culture of #TeamMitch?”

Hey @senatemajldr - these young men look like they work for you.



Just wanted to clarify: are you paying for young men to practice groping & choking members of Congress w/ your payroll, or is this just the standard culture of #TeamMitch?



Thanks. https://t.co/ysRJuwonUx — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 6, 2019

McConnell campaign spokesman Kevin Golden told HuffPost in an email that Team Mitch “in no way condones any aggressive, suggestive, or demeaning act toward life-sized cardboard cutouts of any gender.” He said the men are “not campaign staff; they’re high schoolers, and it’s incredible that the national media has sought to once again paint a target on their backs rather than report real, and significant news in our country.” Some of the same men also appeared in a photo on the official “Team Mitch” Instagram account for the Fancy Farm picnic, holding aloft cutout faces of Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

The photo was the second controversial image to come out of Team Mitch’s participation at the Fancy Farm picnic. Another photo showed cardboard gravestones, including one with the name of the Kentucky senator’s Democratic challenger in 2020, Amy McGrath. The campaign tweeted the image under the headline: “The Grim Reaper of Socialism.”

Hours after the El Paso shooting, Mitch McConnell proudly tweeted this photo. I find it so troubling that our politics have become so nasty and personal that the Senate Majority Leader thinks it's appropriate to use imagery of the death of a political opponent (me) as messaging. pic.twitter.com/2x5kO5jwPi — Amy McGrath (@AmyMcGrathKY) August 5, 2019