You’ve heard the saying “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” to explain how you can succeed by working hard and using your own resourcefulness, without the help of others.
One Democrat in Congress wants you to know that it’s impossible to pull oneself up by shoelaces or bootstraps — that it is a physical impossibility.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York City, lectured a room on Wednesday during an Oversight Committee hearing:
“You know this idea and this metaphor of a bootstrap started off as a joke?” Ocasio-Cortez asked the room. “Because it’s a physical impossibility to lift yourself up by a bootstrap — by your shoelaces. It’s physically impossible. The whole thing is a joke,” she said emphatically.
In case you didn’t quite grasp what she was getting at, here’s the video of the congresswoman, who later that day skipped the State of the Union address by President Trump.