Without calling her out outright, the Democratic freshman congresswoman and Twitter wonder Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday rebuked the first daughter Ivanka Trump for sounding off on something she could never truly understand: working for a living wage.

Describing her expertise “as a person who actually worked for tips and hourly wages”, Ocasio-Cortez essentially pointed out that Ivanka Trump has never had to work a minimum wage job in her life and that her comments on the Green New Deal jobs guarantee rang hollow.

As a person who actually worked for tips & hourly wages in my life, instead of having to learn about it 2nd-hand, I can tell you that most people want to be paid enough to live.



A living wage isn’t a gift, it’s a right. Workers are often paid far less than the value they create. https://t.co/P5FsQuhCTW — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 26, 2019

“Imagine attacking a jobs guarantee by saying ‘people prefer to earn money’,” Ocasio-Cortez later tweeted.

Trump had waded into the Green New Deal debate on Monday during an interview with Steve Hilton on Fox News.

“I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get,” Trump responded to Hilton’s question about the Green New Deal. “So, I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want. They want the ability to be able to secure a job. They want the ability to live in a country where’s there’s the potential for upward mobility.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal proposal, which she launched with the Massachusetts senator Ed Markey this month, seeks to eliminate greenhouse gas pollution in the United States over the next decade while also addressing inequality with a job guarantee program “to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one”.

Dozens of progressive lawmakers have endorsed the blueprint and young climate activists have launched an ambitious push to convince others to sign up. Republicans have condemned it, and some Democrats have said it is not feasible in the 10-year timeframe proposed.

Facing a torrent of criticism following the Fox News interview, Trump backpedaled on Tuesday, tweeting that she supported a minimum wage, just not “a minimum guarantee for people ‘unwilling to work’, which was the question asked of me”.

That did not appear to be the question asked of her nor what she originally said. In Fox News video, Hilton says: “You’ve got people who will see that offer from the Democrats, from the progressive Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: ‘Here’s the Green New Deal, here’s the guarantee of a job,’ and think, ‘Yeah, that’s what I want, it’s that simple.’ What do you say to those people?”