AOC Mocks 'Wack' Times Square Billboard Blaming Her For Killing Amazon Deal

After Amazon decided not to build a giant corporate campus in Queens last week, the blame has mostly been spread amongst progressive activists, State Senator Michael Gianaris, the $3 billion in grants and subsidies, and—dear God—even Amazon itself. Among the many people who weren't directly involved: Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Sure, she tweeted about it a few times, but she had zero authority or oversight over the deal itself, and she doesn't even rep the district in Long Island City where Amazon was landing. Nevertheless, she is a lightning rod for frothing-at-the-mouth, right-wing inanity, which might explain why a conservative group put up a giant billboard in Times Square this week sarcastically thanking AOC for tanking the Amazon deal she had nothing to do with.

The Job Creators Network (JCN), an "advocacy group" founded by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and funded primarily by Republican megadonors the Mercer Family Foundation, said they were putting the billboard up on 42nd Street near 8th Avenue for a week. "The pullout of Amazon—because of anti-business politicians, notably Ocasio-Cortez—is a major blow to the New York economy," they said in a statement.

"The Amazon pullout is a perfect example of what we’ve been saying: socialism takes and capitalism creates," said Alfredo Ortiz, JCN President and CEO. "The economic consequences of Amazon’s pullout is just a small taste of the harm that is to come if Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-business canon comes to fruition and is made federal policy."

AOC, of course, was typically unfazed by the attack against her: "Few things effectively communicate the power we’ve built in fighting dark money & anti-worker policies like billionaire-funded groups blowing tons of cash on wack billboards (this one is funded by the Mercers)," she wrote on Twitter. "(PS fact that it’s in Times Sq tells you this isn’t for/by NYers.)"

She's also turning rancid lemons into lemonade by fundraising off of the billboard attacks as well, sending an email out to supporters today saying, "right-wing groups are seizing that chance to smear Alexandria and attack her for supporting community activists."

The group that bought this billboard in Times Square doesn’t care about New York’s 14th district, or the people of New York. It’s just a front group, funded by the Mercer Foundation and bolstered by Breitbart. Their founder was the second largest donor to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

This isn’t about jobs, and these right-wing provocateurs couldn’t care less about the working-class families that would have been displaced by Amazon. This is about sending a message to local politicians that dare to question the backroom deals that give massive corporations billions of dollars that could be spent on our subways and schools.

And then she threw in some (justified) Michael Scott comparisons just for a laugh:

As Investopedia has previously reported, "It costs between $1.1 and $4 million a year to buy advertising space in Times Square. Moreover, it can cost up to $3 million per month to advertise on Time Square's largest billboard."

Three million per month works out to roughly $750,000 per week, which is less than what Jeff Bezos makes every four minutes.