Far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned her Twitter followers Tuesday that an account parodying her posts was gaining steam after her nemesis Elon Musk engaged with it.
“FYI there’s a fake account on here impersonating me and going viral. The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility,” the Bronx and Queens Democrat posted.
“It is releasing false policy statements and gaining spread. I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see.”
The joke account, labeled “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Press Release (parody),” responded minutes later, mocking the progressive firebrand’s overly serious reaction with its trademark snark.
“After brainstorming with my staff – I’m going to push Congress to make it illegal to joke, laugh, or make fun of me,” it said. “Parody should be illegal.”
“I can’t believe someone would do that to us,” another message from the comedy account read.
Another declared, “I’m having my staff report every single tweet that makes fun of me to the DOJ.”
One post that was viewed nearly 400,000 times took a shot at the lawmaker’s climate change agenda: “To make windmills more effective — when the wind doesn’t blow, we should have helicopters hover over each of them and keep them turning year-round.”
The spoof, which had tweeted almost 60 times over the past three days, drew the attention of the congresswoman after Musk, Twitter’s CEO, responded to one of its Sunday posts with a fire emoji.
“This might be the wine talking, but I’ve got a crush on @elonmusk,” the message in question read.
The joke followed a series of acrimonious exchanges online between Musk and Ocasio-Cortez after he took over the social media platform last year — with the congresswoman tying the acquisition to an “explosion of hate crimes.”
When a Twitter user asked Musk, 51 — who had once complimented the “Squad” member’s “taste in lipstick” — whether the continued contention was a form of flirting, the Tesla CEO said AOC, 33, would “never date” him because he wasn’t “cool enough.”
The fake AOC followed up Tuesday afternoon with a faux-coquettish message: “If @elonmusk wants to have a chance with me, he’ll immediately ban the parody account of me.
“This is like literally not funny,” the account added, imitating Ocasio-Cortez’s millennial patter. A later tweet took it even further: “Like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, literally.”
By mid-afternoon Tuesday, the parody account had about 110,000 followers, less than 1% of the 13.4 million people who follow the real AOC.
Twitter allows mock accounts of notable people as long as they “distinguish themselves in their account name and in their bio,” according to the company’s bylaws.
The bio for the comedy account reads: “Saying the quiet part out loud. (parody),” and features the identical profile picture to AOC’s official Twitter platform.
The real congresswoman’s account is distinguished by a gray checkmark, which indicates it represents government property.
The fake account has a blue checkmark, which is offered to Twitter Blue subscribers who pay $8 a month and have accounts that aren’t “misleading and deceptive,” according to company literature.