A Super Bowl Twitter fight between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) proved more interesting than the big game.
The two freshmen lawmakers engaged in an NFL-themed tussle on Sunday and Monday over Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed tax on the super-rich.
Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who lost an eye in Afghanistan, kicked off the exchange by asking on Twitter if the Super Bowl champ New England Patriots should be taxed at 70 percent “so that NFL competition is more fair and equal.”
The New York progressive didn’t back down from Crenshaw’s swipe. She threw some NFL salary stats at him, and added exiled quarterback Colin Kaepernick to the conversation.
“The average NFL salary is $2.1 million, so most players would never experience a 70% rate,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “The owners who refuse to hire Kaepernick would, though.”
Forbes cited $2.1 million as the NFL average in a 2016 article, but other sources say it has since risen.
Ocasio-Cortez has been drawing heat from the right and self-styled centrist Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks CEO, for her idea that those making over $10 million pay a marginal tax rate of 70 percent to fund climate-change initiatives.
But she had plenty of followers on her team after her clapback at Crenshaw.
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