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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a 29-year-old woman. She defeated an incumbent House Representative in New York and was immediately catapulted to the national stage. As a self-described Democratic Socialist, her politics are quite left-leaning. Since about half of the U.S. population leans more conservative, naturally a lot of people disagree with her politics. That’s totally ok. It’s the rhetoric that surrounds her that’s worrisome.

I don’t refer to the the political spats, either. For example, Outgoing Senator Claire McCaskill called Ocasio-Cortez a “bright shiny new object.” Ocasio-Cortez fired back on Twitter, saying “”Not sure why fmr Sen. McCaskill keeps going on TV to call me a ‘thing’ and ‘shiny object,’ but it’s pretty disappointing.” Fair enough, but that’s fairly standard partisan bickering.

What worries me is the dance video that came out. In the video, a college-aged Ocasio-Cortez dances around barefoot. No big deal. Seriously––it’s no big deal. Some on the left have speculated, however, that it was a right-wing attempt to discredit Ocasio-Cortez. You know, because the state of our politics is so bad that some embarrassing dance moves spells certain political death.

I do not think, however, the video was leaked by a right-wing enemy. It’s clumsy, it’s pointless, and it’s not embarrassing. What makes me think that? This paragraph from the NYT write up:

An edited version of the original footage surfaced when a Twitter account with the handle @AnonymousQ1776 published it online. “Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is,” read the tweet from @AnonymousQ1776, which incorrectly described it as a video from her high school days. The account was deleted before it resurfaced and disappeared again on Saturday.

This is what worries me. This tweet is inane. It’s over-the-top in its political vehemence. It seems like it could come from some “basement-dwelling right-wing nut job” from middle America. But it seems more likely to me that this is an example of Russian interference in U.S. politics. The goal of this video was not to discredit Ocasio-Cortez, but instead to get Americans arguing with each other.

More politics.