This is why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is quoting Evita Perón

(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

In 2018 interviews with Tim Alberta, President Trump took credit for predicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D-N.Y.) unexpected primary victory over longtime Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley, and he compared her to late Argentine first lady Eva Perón, according excerpts of Alberta's new book, American Carnage, highlighted by The Guardian on Sunday. Trump, an avowed fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's musical Evita, appeared to mean it as a compliment.

While watching TV with his political advisers in early summer 2018, "I see a young woman," he told Alberta, "ranting and raving like a lunatic on a street corner, and I said: 'That's interesting, go back.'" Alberta said Trump "became enamored" of and "starstruck" by Ocasio-Cortez, then a long-shot challenger. "I called her Eva Perón," Trump claimed. "I said, 'That's Eva Perón. That's Evita.'" He added that after Ocasio-Cortez won, he rubbed it in his dismissive advisers' faces. "She's got talent," Trump told Alberta. "Now, that's the good news. The bad news: she doesn't know anything. She's got a good sense, an 'it' factor, which is pretty good, but she knows nothing. But with time, she has real potential."

Ocasio-Cortez read about Trump's mixed infatuation and decided to run with it.

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Perón was an actor who married Argentine President Juan Perón and earned a reputation as a hero of the poor and downtrodden before dying at age 33 in 1952. Trump is a fan of Patti LuPone's Broadway embodiment of Evita, not Madonna's 1996 film version.

Ocasio-Cortez got some flak for quoting Eva Perón, but there's no need to cry for her. The truth is, she didn't start it.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.