Washington Post slaps AOC with 'highly misleading' claim on Trump funding for opioid emergency

“Amount President Trump has transferred from other agencies to fund his ‘Build the Wall’ Emergency: $10s of millions, & has identified billions more. Amount he’s transferred to address the Opioid National Emergency: $0,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Friday night.
The tweet included a previous CSPAN post of a five-minute clip taken as the New York Democrat was questioning James W. Carroll, the White House director of drug policy. The tweet included the caption: “@AOC compares #OpioidCrisis to #SouthernBorder: ‘So, we've got two emergencies, one is treated with an actual action and the other is just to raise awareness.’”

💰Amount President Trump has transferred from other agencies to fund his ‘Build the Wall’ Emergency: $10s of millions, & has identified billions more.

💰 Amount he’s transferred to address the Opioid National Emergency: $0 https://t.co/KamONSr67q

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 8, 2019

The Washington Post has hit Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with more pinocchios after she tweeted something they deemed “highly misleading” last week.

Here’s the lowdown:

NY POST – In a tweet on March 8, the freshman Democratic lawmaker criticized Trump for wanting to divert money via a national emergency declaration to build a wall on the southern border but did not take the same action over opioid overdoses.

“Amount President Trump has transferred from other agencies to fund his ‘Build the Wall’ Emergency: $10s of millions, & has identified billions more. Amount he’s transferred to address the Opioid National Emergency: $0,” she wrote in the tweet that was liked and retweeted nearly 50,000 times.

The Opioid National Emergency is a legitimate national emergency – it was declared back in 2017.

Here’s why AOC is wrong:

The newspaper’s fact-checker said she incorrectly compared two different situations.

“Trump wanted almost $6 billion for his wall, which Congress refused. But Congress acted to give the administration more than $6 billion for the opioid crisis, so there was little need for him to transfer funds without congressional authorization,” the Washington Post concluded on Tuesday.

Trump didn’t transfer funds because he didn’t have to. Congress ponied up the opioid money back in 2017.

I know AOC is new to Congress, but she really needs to get her facts straight if she wants to avoid more pinocchios in the future. After all, this isn’t the first time she’s gotten them.

Wapo gave her three pinocchios for this one.