Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Suspects Washington Would Be Less Hostile With a Decent Bacon, Egg, and Cheese

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez returned to Showtime’s Desus and Mero with a couple of observations in her pocket: One, no one in Congress is smarter than a bartender; two, Washington is a bacon, egg and cheese desert, a realization that would leave any New Yorker reeling.

Decked out in Timbs, Ocasio-Cortez took fellow Bronx natives Desus and Mero on a tour around the Parkchester neighborhood of the Bronx that Ocasio-Cortez represents in Congress.

“We’re going to start our day as any Bronx hike does with a bodega sandwich,” Desus said. “What kind of bodega sandwich do you like to eat?”

“I’m a bacon, egg and cheese,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“Nice, What kind of cheese?” Desus asked.

“Well, I do cheddar if I can,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “American if I have to.”

Hm, acceptable answer, even though American cheese—processed though it may be—is the best cheese for melting on sandwich like this. But I digress. Ocasio-Cortez made up for her somewhat controversial cheese preference when she asked the right question upon entering the bodega: “Where’s the cat?”

“Impossible!” Ocasio-Cortez said. “There’s no bodegas anywhere. I don’t know how anybody eats in Washington, D.C. Which probably explains why everybody’s fighting all the time.”

“They’re hangry!” Mero suggested.

This explains a lot, actually.

Later, the trio hit up a bar to see if Ocasio-Cortez still retained her old bartending skills. Many of her rivals on the right revel in the fact that she was bartending right before she became a congresswoman. But Ocasio-Cortez thinks the joke is on them.

“It’s not an insult to me [when people say I should go back to bartending], and I feel like people are always clowning themselves when they say that,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It’s like, okay, so you think every person you represent that’s a bartender, a waitress, a working person, what, that they can’t do this job? Because let me tell you, I work with some of these people, and they are not smarter than a bartender.”

Ocasio-Cortez proceeded to make margaritas and a Hennesey Shirley Temple, the latter of which gives me a headache just thinking about.

They ended the day with Mexican food and a prayer to Big Pun. In other words, a serene Bronx day. If only there had been a cat in that bodega.