New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mocked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy with a new definition of "boy math"—a spin-off of the "girl math" trend of jokes among women to justify spending money—after the term began trending on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The "girl math" trend was recently co-opted by men online who didn't seem to get the joke and complained that women don't know how math works.
Mocking McCarthy's hapless tenure as Speaker of the House of Representatives ahead of a potential government shutdown, Ocasio-Cortez wrote:
"Boy math is needing 15 attempts to count the votes correctly to become Speaker and then shutting down the government 9 months later."
You can see her post below.
Ocasio-Cortez's remark referred to the criticism the Republican-controlled house faced earlier this year that culminated in McCarthy ascending to the coveted position—but only after 15 rounds of voting.
It took four days of voting before many of the Republicans who had opposed McCarthy began voting for him or not voting at all following negotiations between rounds. On the fifteenth and final ballot, the six remaining Republican holdouts abstained from voting, allowing McCarthy to receive 216 votes, or 50.5 percent of the votes cast for a named candidate, and be elected Speaker.
McCarthy's supporters had called on Republicans to support McCarthy's bid for the speakership amid what The New York Times referred to as a "right-wing rebellion" designed to block him from party leadership.
McCarthy has since been forced to cave to the right-wing faction on more than one occasion and is weathering further attacks while working to end a government shutdown by the end of the month.
Many have joined the Congresswoman in mocking the Speaker.
Ocasio-Cortez later responded to a report that McCarthy seeks a meeting with President Joe Biden as he tries to appease House Republican hard-liners who have called for significant spending cuts.
The report from NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur, which noted that McCarthy had previously "reneged on a 2-year budget deal he struck with Biden under pressure from his hardliners, and has struggled to pass a funding bill through the House," quickly drew the Congresswoman's ire.
She wrote:
"McCarthy already got his meeting [with] Biden and they struck a deal to keep [the government] open months ago. GOP held the entire US [government] hostage in exchange for cuts [and] forced restart of student loan payments."
"Deal is done. Biden held his end. Nothing to relitigate. McCarthy can go pound sand."
You can see her post below.
The Senate has reached a bipartisan stopgap spending deal to ward off a government shutdown but the measure still faces hurdles in the House.
And late Tuesday, it was reported that the GOP House passed four appropriations bills to the House floor, but these are widely seen as too little too late to avert a shutdown. The internal strife among Republicans may further intensify as they approach the point of having to make policy compromises to pass legislation that Biden would sign into law.
The situation has left many within the GOP concerned about the party's internal division. According to Tennessee Republican Representative Tim Burchett, the party is "very dysfunctional" right now, suggesting that GOP leaders are struggling to gauge votes compared to their Democratic counterparts.
