Ocasio-Cortez has become a staunch ally of Vice President Kamala Harris’s battle to win the presidency in November. She told her Instagram audience of over 8 million this week that Stein’s long-shot campaign against Harris was “not serious” and “not authentic.” The Green Party party’s candidate’s presidential race “reads as predatory,” Cortez claimed.  

Stein issued a scathing clapback to the congresswoman Tuesday. 

“Hey y’all, this is a little spicy but I had thoughts about @AOC calling me and the Green Party ‘not authentic’ and ‘predatory,” she wrote in a post to X that mocked Cortez’s “very authentic concern about growing green power.” 

Hey y’all, this is a little spicy but I had thoughts about @AOC calling me and the Green Party “not authentic” and “predatory.” pic.twitter.com/F1jniwO77X

— Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein) September 3, 2024

“Clearly, AOC is the attack dog du jour, and the Democrats are running scared, and they should be, because who wants to support a genocide? Who wants to vote for a genocide?” Stein questioned, referencing the war in Gaza. “If there’s anything that’s predatory here, it’s saying that your candidate is working tirelessly for a ceasefire when actually they are actively funding and arming genocide and actually refusing to even consider an arms embargo, which would bring the genocide to a screeching halt.”

Stein made two failed runs for the presidency as a Green Party candidate in 2012 and 2016. She has positioned herself to the left of Harris throughout her 2024 presidential bid and said she will halt U.S. aid to Israel and seek an immediate ceasefire in Gaza should she win the election. Harris has attached herself to the Biden administration’s more centrist positions on the Middle Eastern conflict during her campaign and declared she supports Israel’s right to self-defense and wants to see an end to the “suffering” in Gaza. Harris has not used the word “genocide” to refer to Israel’s military campaign.

The vice president’s rhetoric has alienated her from some members of her own party, such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), in addition to Stein. Pro-Palestinian protesters staged a walk-in during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago earlier this month. They sparked a firestorm after complaining that party leadership refused to allow a Palestinian-American speaker to address the high-profile event. Ocasio-Cortez spoke on the first night of the DNC and highlighted her position as a rising star within the party.

“AOC, who’s supposed to be in the leadership of the Democratic Party — it’s amazing she doesn’t know about the anti-democratic tactics and strategies that the Democratic Party uses to crush and silence political opposition,” Stein complained Tuesday. 

Democrats have attempted to block Stein from the presidential ballot in battleground states such as Wisconsin, where losing a small number of votes to a third-party candidate could cost Harris the election. 

“They’ve been hiring an army of lawyers to throw competitors like me off the ballot,” Stein grumbled. “How is that not fraud and election interference?”