Good news out of the non-scientific community Monday morning, as a former bartender turned Congresswoman turned prolific Tweeter reassured the American people that she was not being serious when she (very seriously) said we only have 12 years to live.

“This is a technique of the GOP, to take dry humor + sarcasm literally and ‘fact check’ it. Like the ‘world ending in 12 years’ thing, you’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal. But the GOP is basically Dwight from The Office so who knows,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said.

This is a technique of the GOP, to take dry humor + sarcasm literally and “fact check” it.

Like the “world ending in 12 years” thing, you’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal.

Trending: Ex-Soviet Leader Gorbachev: US Capitol Riot “Planned in Advance, And It Is Clear by Whom”

But the GOP is basically Dwight from The Office so who knows. https://t.co/pmkwrdeAnq

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— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 12, 2019

But the freshman Congresswoman made that exact claim at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event, where she was interviewed by Ta-Nahesi Coates.

“The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?” she said at the event.

It wasn’t just the GOP who took Ocasio-Cortez’s scare mongering seriously.

Several children being used as political pawns by their liberal parents stormed the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to demand action on climate change, and that the elderly Senator vote in favor of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal.

“Some scientists have said that we have 12 years to turn this around,” one little gild told the Senator in the following video:

This is how @SenFeinstein reacted to children asking her to support the #GreenNewDeal resolution — with smugness + disrespect.

This is a fight for our generation's survival. Her reaction is why young people desperately want new leadership in Congress. pic.twitter.com/0zAkaxruMI

— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) February 22, 2019

Failed U.S. Senate candidate and 2020 presidential candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke repeated the claim on the campaign trail in March.

“The scientists are unanimous on this,” he said. “We have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis.”

The Washington Post ran a headline that read “Ocasio-Cortez says the world will end in 12 years. She’s absolutely right.”

Apparently, O’Rourke, the kids, The Post, and the GOP all “have the social intelligence of a sea sponge.”

Or perhaps Ocasio-Cortez took a bad faith swipe at the GOP when she made her boneheaded climate change comments in the first place, and now she’s making a bad faith attempt to walk them back.

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