Allahpundit wrote about this story yesterday. AOC posted photos showing her grandmother’s dilapidated home in Puerto Rico which was damaged by a hurricane four years ago. That prompted Matt Walsh to launch a campaign raising money to fix abuela’s house. And in a matter of hours that effort raised over $100,000. But it turns out everyone who donated will be getting their money back because someone in AOC’s family has rejected the funds.

UPDATE: “someone” in AOC’s abuela’s family told GoFundMe that she won’t take the money, even though AOC previously claimed that her grandma was in dire straits (and it was Trump’s fault). @AOC still hasn’t acknowledged this effort or thanked us. Here’s the email from GoFundMe: pic.twitter.com/MsM4ECLDX0

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 5, 2021

In the end, our campaign raised 100 thousand dollars and could have solved a problem in ten hours that AOC couldn’t solve in four years. We can all be proud of that. As for abuela, all we can do now is pray. pic.twitter.com/aKQLXXVnxE

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 5, 2021

The real genius of this stunt is that it highlights the lie of omission at the center of AOC’s tweet about her abuela’s home. If you followed her original thread to the end she said this:

And for the record – my abuela is doing okay. It’s not about us, but about what’s happening to Puerto Rican’s across the island.

She had a place to go to and be cared for – what about the thousands of people who don’t?

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 2, 2021

“She had a place to go and be cared for.” In other words, she’s not living in the dilapidated house damaged four years ago by a hurricane. She’s fine living somewhere else. But notice the time on that tweet. It shows as 11:43 am on June 2. That was just a few minutes after Matt Walsh said this at 11:39 am.

Shameful that you live in luxury while allowing your own grandmother to suffer in these squalid conditions

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 2, 2021

In other words, I think AOC intentionally left the impression in her initial tweet that her abuela was living in these terrible conditions. It was only after she got called out for being a terrible granddaughter that she admitted the truth. Her abuela hasn’t been living there at all. In any case, Walsh kept hitting on that misleading impression:

As you’ve heard, @AOC’s abuela is living in a dilapidated home that was ravaged by Hurricane Maria. AOC is unable to help her own grandma for whatever reason, so I have set up this Go Fund Me campaign to save her home. Please give if you can. #HelpAbuela https://t.co/F1N0Jxgnxg

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 4, 2021

It’s obviously significant because one reason the house looks as it does is that AOC’s family hasn’t spent any money fixing the damage. That was their choice. It’s not because they can’t afford it (AOC makes a good salary). Who knows why they made that decision. Maybe her abuela is too old to live alone at this point?

And, yes, maybe AOC does have a broader point about the lack of hurricane relief funds in Puerto Rico. I’m not denying that. I’m just saying that she’s being emotionally manipulative by showing this dilapidated, empty house which her family obviously hasn’t repaired because they had other, better options and making it a stand in for conditions generally. It’s not quite lying because she did eventually admit her abuela wasn’t living there but it’s close.

This is a pattern with AOC which we’ve all seen many times. She says things that, when you really examine them, don’t hold up. Then when she gets called out she recedes into the fine points of what she did or didn’t say. In this case, I’m sure she was prepared to argue something like ‘I never said she lived there‘ even though most people would probably assume that was the case based on her initial tweet.

If she were trying to be honest she could simply have said: ‘My abuela moved out of her house 4 years ago after it was damaged by hurricane Maria…’ and then gone on to make her point. But she didn’t do that because it wouldn’t have the same emotional impact as ‘look at my poor abuela’s home!’

In this case she got justifiably embarrassed though of course there are always some partisans in the media who will defend AOC no matter what she does.

I committed a “personal attack” on AOC by raising 100 thousand dollars for her impoverished grandmother pic.twitter.com/Q0iUB77j2i

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 5, 2021

In any case, here’s Matt Walsh’s last word on this effort.

Am I now tempted to start a website called TrollFunding for all troll and meme fundraising efforts?

Yes most definitely

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 5, 2021