'Trump would sell this country for a dollar': AOC highlights stakes of Trump's desperation

whether he is defrauding Banks about the value of his real estate holdings or convincing his most loyal supporters to pay for his legal bills Donald Trump has usually found a way to get other people to pick up the tab for him but now for the first time he is facing accountability for his scheming right here in New York the state that bore the brunt of his chicanery for decades and so it is fitting that the person who helped put all of this in motion the investigation that led to this Landmark $4

50 million ruling against Donald Trump was a congresswoman from New York it was 5 years ago when Donald Trump's fixer Michael Cohen was called up to Capitol Hill to testify about his former boss a lot of the questioning focused on Trump's racism and his hush money payments and his potential ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but when newly elected congresswoman Alexandria okazi Cortez was called on she focused on a relatively OB obscure part of Donald Trump's business dealings your knowledg

e did the president ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company yes who else knows that the president did this Alan weiselberg Ron liberman and Matthew calamari and where would the committee find more information on this do you think we need to review his financial statements and his tax returns in order to compare them yes and you'd find it at the Trump org that moment set in motion a line of inquiry that led to the order today filed a few hours ago and now Donald Trump has just 30 day

s to pay the state of New York nearly half a billion dollars and Counting joining me now to discuss is congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez she represents of course the 14th District of New York it's great to see you thank you great to see you in person no less um so my first is just it's amazing watching that tape and I wonder if you know that was I think your fresh that was your freshman year yeah one of my first hearings as well um did you ever imagine that that line of inquiry would lead t

o the moment we find ourselves in now I mean I don't think anybody saw the scale and the degree to the of this ruling that has come down but I think even when Donald Trump was first running in 2016 people did say nobody knows Donald Trump like New Yorkers do and he had such a notorious reputation for this kind of shady dealing in construction in real estate in Contracting famous for not really paying out his contracts and fleecing working people all across New York City we knew him as a fraud fo

r longer and better than almost anybody else in the country um and really that line of questioning that we just saw was inspired by Trump lyns which is yeah right by the bridge that connects uh the Bronx and queens which is in which is the burrow that I the two Burrows that I represent and I drive across that bridge all the time you know going from from family to family visiting in the community and that also was built using a public private land deal and so we know that there are so many of the

se Shady dealings that are going on and not only was this just an example of Donald Trump uh you know defrauding for his own personal enrichment but also fleecing the working people of New York City in order to enrich himself yeah I we were we didn't have we don't we never we never have enough time but um that you begin that line of questioning or ended it talking about driving by that golf course and it sounds like the Trump name became almost talismanic representative of this inequity this thi

s two-tiered system everything that's kind of wrong with the world and I guess I just wonder sort of as a New Yorker as a person that is trying to make change in government sort of what this moment me means for you I mean this is the day when the order's gone through the clock starts ticking $111,000 of Interest AC Cruise every single day that Donald Trump doesn't pay this he seems to be having money problems his lawyers are saying can we push off the date by which we have to pay this both here

and in the egene Carol Case what does the moment feel like for you as you watch this all unfold you know I think it's it it's it's such an important moment because in this country in this moment We As Americans have gotten so used to the wealthy committing Financial crimes and fleecing working people and getting away with it Time After Time After Time that golf course that that was there in Trump links just at the edge of it is Nicha public housing and you have people who can't even get adequate

heat in the winter time that that are that are up on a high-rise apartment or an apartment several you know many feet up in the air and they have to overlook this golf course that is that was subsidized with public resources when they can't even be sure that they're drinking water that doesn't have lead in it and so to me what this ruling finally starts to represent is that the buck is starting to stop here Donald Trump has been able to play the shell game and he's been able to swap One debt fo

r another and one leverage for another and now with this ruling the state of New York is saying you actually have to pay up now and our hope is that with those assets when we return them back to the public that they can be used to further not only not only further the the the good of the public but also to send a message that this is a justice system that you cannot and should not buy your way out of and for too long the wealthy have and so this is not just about about Trump I think this should

be a message to all of all people who think that that they can fleece this system and get away with behavior like this that comes at the cost of everyday Working Families it's so interesting that you say that because the trumps have said this decision is going to ruin New York New York is over by virtue of holding us accountable for bad behavior fraudulent Behavior everyone's goingon to leave I don't know what that says about New York I think we actually have the sound can we hear what Eric Trum

p had to say about his father's travails you have a lost state right now where you have businesses fleeing fleeing fleeing and you have a company like ours that have paid over $300 million in taxes to a city my father built the skyline of New York City and this is the thanks he gets just architecturally i' take issue with the idea that Donald Trump built the skyline maybe like the Trump developments on the upper west side but um I mean what do you say to that because that as much as it's sort of

comic that the trumps are saying the departure of Donald Trump's going to ruin New York you know you can see how this line that New York is anti- business Titan might have some residents in C certain circles and I wonder what your response to that would be New York is so anti business that Wall Street is located here that Midtown Manhattan is soaring up billionaires row you know that that we have the top 1% not only in the United States but globally constantly trying to purchase us up and Gobbl

e up real estate here something tells me that that is full of hot air and in fact when we want to talk about New York City and who is leaving there is this there is such a an interest imp pedling this myth and this lie that having a fair and enforcing a fair tax system is causing the wealthy to flee when the data actually shows that it's the opposite rent in New York City just like across the rest of this country has gotten out of control our housing crisis has has gotten to such Epic Proportion

s that not just the poor the working class the middle class upper middle class people can't even afford to live in the city anymore if anyone is leaving it is the actual people that make New York City work it's the working class and so you know to Eric Trump I'd say you know what you can let go a couple of those towers and maybe we turn them into public housing so people can actually afford to live here put that on a mug um I do want to ask you because we're talking about this moment where it se

ems like there's accountability if not a downright Reckoning are you worried at all about whether the criminal justice system will actually hold Donald Trump into account and I want to ask you this as someone who survived January 6th it was a viscerally terrifying moment from you from the accounts you've shared publicly it is something the house explored robustly through the January 6 committee but some something that the Department of Justice appeared sort of slow to take up in terms of its inv

estigation and prosecution of Donald Trump I yeah I I do have extraordinary concern about it can you talk a little bit about you know sort of if you had a message to Merck Garland um in this moment as a Democrat who sort of understands what that moment meant for the country for me it's not even as a Democrat but it's as an American are we really going to see what happened on January 6th and not have serious consequence for it if we do not issue if there is not a clear proceeding that is Swift it

's not this is not just about an individual case this is about the message that this sends for our democracy and if there is not Clarity on how unacceptable and how clear the crimes were that happened on January 6th and leading up to January 6th then we are creating an open question about whether this is is acceptable or not and I that cuts to the core not just of our justice system but to our democracy and we are hurdling towards an election where you have a Donald Trump who is more desperate t

han he has ever been particularly with this financial ruling more financially desperate than he's ever been he was hoarding classified documents about us security secrets in maral Lago and we don't know the full extent but what I believe is that Donald Trump would sell this country for a dollar if he thinks that it would benefit himself and when you have a settlement of over $400 million we need to be really serious about the stakes of what's Happening Here Yeah and find out if anybody posts fon

d for him who those people actually are who has half a billion dollars laying around and