New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told Democratic strategist David Axelrod during a Friday event in Chicago that she is not ruling out a presidential run in 2028. The four-term House member from New York City said her ambition is “bigger” than the presidency. “In this op-ed that Jeff Bezos paid for in The Washington Post…it was the elite saying if you want this job, you just stepped out of line,” she said. “What’s funny about that is they assume my ambition is positional. They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. My ambition is way bigger than that.” “My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go, but single payer healthcare is forever. A living wage is forever. Worker’s rights are forever. Women’s rights,” she said. She also says, “I don’t want to make decisions from a place of what’s in it for me. I want to make decisions from a place of how are we going to change the country.”

DAVID AXELROD: There are a lot of people who would like you to run for president in 2028. Apparently, some of them are here. And there are others who would like you to run for the United States Senate… What say you about all of this? REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: You know, it’s funny, because in this op-ed that Jeff Bezos paid for in The Washington Post, there was this line that you had mentioned earlier about, well, as a potential 2028 contender, XYZ. And in the context of that, it was very clear this was a veiled threat, right? This was the elite saying, “If you want this job, you just stepped out of line. And we want you to know where the real power is. And it’s in the modern-day barons who own the Post and own the algorithms. And we’ll make an example out of you.” And what’s funny about that is that they assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat, and my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go. Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go. But single-payer healthcare is forever. A living wage is forever. Workers’ rights are forever. Women’s rights, all of that. And so, anyways, to put a finer point to your question, when you aren’t attached, when you haven’t been fantasizing about being this or that since the time you were 7 years old, it is tremendously liberating because I get to wake up every day and say, “How am I going to meet the moment?” And conditions change radically all the time. So I make my response less to an attachment to some positional title or position and working backwards from there. But I make decisions by waking up in the morning, looking out the window, and observing the conditions of this country and saying, “What move or what decision can I make today that is going to get us closer to that future stronger, faster, better than yesterday?” And those conditions – I remember the first time I walked onto the Senate floor. I was a freshman in the House. And a fun fact is that House members are allowed to go onto the Senate, but Senate members are not allowed to go into the House unless they’re allowed in and invited. And so I had walked onto the Senate floor, and I looked around and I was like, “Wow, everyone here thinks they’re going to be president, and they are making decisions from that place.” And I don’t want to make decisions from a place of, “What’s in it for me?” I want to make decisions from a place of, “How are we going to change the country?” And so that’s in response to people in math. It’s in response to the numbers that we have in the House and in the Senate. I count votes. I build caucuses. I help elect responsible and principled people, and I try to decouple our political system from money and politics. And so my decisions come from a very substantive place. And that’s what goes into weighing it. And the great thing about that is that no billionaire can stop that. No concentrated level of power, no elite, no gatekeeper can prevent me from doing everything I can, waking up every day in service of the working class. And I can do that in the House. I can do it in the Senate. I can do it from the White House. I can do it from a shack in upstate New York, chopping wood and being a burnout. I can do it. DAVID AXELROD: Wow. That’s one I didn’t – that was one I didn’t even think of. Well, if it makes you feel any better, and if you find this more liberating, I don’t think you were going to get Jeff Bezos’s endorsement anyway. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Shucks.

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