Trump refers to Ocasio-Cortez as just ‘Cortez’ because it ‘takes too much time’ to say full name

President Trump on Wednesday said that he referred to Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as just “Cortez” because he doesn’t “have time to go with three different names.”

Trump made the comment during a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, on Wednesday night while recalling a brief exchange he previously shared about the New York Democrat’s name.

“They said, ‘That’s not her name, sir,’” Trump recalled, “I said, ‘no, no, I don’t have time to go with three different names. We’ll call her Cortez. Takes too much time.” 

Trump says of @AOC “I don’t have time to go with three different names. We will call her Cortez.” pic.twitter.com/FFqTYg24gq

— Zack Ford (@ZackFord) July 18, 2019

Trump went on to take aim at the lawmaker for a remark she made last month, in which she said detention centers holding undocumented immigrants on the southern border are “exactly” like concentration camps.

“The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are,” she said then. “If that doesn’t bother you … I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘never again’ means something.”

Trump told his base that she said “essentially Nazis are running concentration camps.”

{mosads}“And when Mike Pence went down just a few days ago with members of Congress and the media, and you looked at those so-called horrible concentration camps, they said, ‘Wow. These places or clean. Wow. They have air conditioning. They have water,’” Trump went on. 

An internal watchdog report released earlier this month found overcrowding that was putting both detainees and agents at risk. The report described standing room only cells for migrants, who were not fed hot meals or given showers.

“You know in a very short period of time, if the Democrats would give us a few votes we could solve the immigration problem and it would be so good. It would be so good,” he continued. 

Trump’s comments taking aim at Ocasio-Cortez come as the president continues to face backlash for tweets he shared telling the freshman Democrat and three other minority lawmakers — Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — to “go back” to their home countries.

Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley were born in the U.S., and Omar is a naturalized citizen.

Earlier this week, the House voted to pass a resolution that condemned Trump’s tweets targeting the minority congresswomen as racist. Four Republicans broke party ranks to join all Democrats in passing the measure.