Kyrsten Sinema Trolls AOC About Filibuster, Reminds Everyone How Much She Sucks

We didn’t actually need the reminder.

Republicans have gleefully used the filibuster to obstruct Democratic presidential agendas. The filibuster is the perfect asymmetrical weapon for their purposes because most of what they want — passing tax cuts for billionaires and confirming far-right judges — doesn’t require 60 votes in the Senate. So, of course, it was disappointing that the one time the filibuster might’ve helped Democrats impede Donald Trump’s Godzilla rampage through American democracy, they refused to pull the trigger.

Former Senator and hedge fund foster child Kyrsten Sinema reemerged after the continuing resolution vote — not to denounce her former GOP BFFs who negotiated the awful deal — but to point and laugh at her former Democratic frenemies who wanted to filibuster it. She dug up at a 2022 social media post from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that called out Sinema’s remarks about the upcoming Dobbs decision. Women had lost a constitutional right and Sinema was sharing entries from her inspirational-quote-of-the-day calendar.

---

---

Chuck Schumer Is Not Our Right-Hand Man

Sinema had written in May 2022 when someone who definitely wasn’t Sam Alito leaked the draft Dobbs opinion: “Throughout my time in Congress, I’ve always supported women’s access to health care, I’m a cosponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, and I’ll continue working with anyone to protect women’s ability to make decisions about their futures.”

Ocasio-Cortez responded: “We could protect Roe tomorrow, but Sinema refuses to act on the filibuster. Until that changes she can take a seat talking about ‘women’s access to health care.’ Hold everyone contributing to this disaster accountable, GOP & Dem obstructionists included. She should be primaried.”

And she was, but Sinema left the Democratic Party like a coward later that year so she wouldn’t have to face primary voters. (Elon Musk praised her defection.) She soon realized running as an independent wouldn’t improve her prospects, so she left Congress a one-term wonder who’d let her supporters fund her Eat, Pray, Love-inspired lifestyle.

Kyrsten Sinema Racks Up The Frequent Grifter Miles As Senate Career Ends

Sinema snarkily remarked that Ocasio-Cortez had a “change of heart on the filibuster, I see!” Pettiness seems to motivate her off the couch these days more than active threats to the American experiment. The suggestion that AOC is a filibuster hypocrite isn’t entirely true, either. Sinema was specifically responding to The Hill headline that read: “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Chuck Schumer saying he’ll vote to advance CR: ‘Deep sense of outrage and betrayal.’” There’s no direct mention of the filibuster.

Ocasio-Cortez is clearly disappointed that Schumer, who holds the title of Senate Minority Leader, snubbed House Democrats and voted for the MAGA budget. The sad irony is that Schumer and the nine other Democratic patsies only voted for the budget so it could reach the 60-vote threshold. Not only didn’t Democrats use the filibuster to their advantage, they helped Republicans punch them in their own faces.

The New York Senator upgrade we all need responded to Sinema’s trolling: “Still no. In fact, the same Dems who argue to keep the filibuster ‘for when we need it’ do not, in fact, use it when we need it. It’s only used to block Dem policies. Never to block harmful GOP ones. Could have proved us wrong. Instead they proved the point.”

The Kyrsten Sinema Party Is Over

The Kyrsten Sinema/Joe Manchin arguments for keeping the filibuster were that it promoted compromise and prevented radical policy changes that most of the nation opposed. Observable reality has disproved both arguments. The GOP consistently used the filibuster to impose minority rule, so the Democratic-controlled Senate was unable to pass legislation that had majority public support —for instance, laws protecting abortion and voting rights.

More so than Manchin, Sinema raised the alarm about what might happen if Democrats successfully killed the filibuster and Republicans were then free to pass horrible legislation on a party-line vote (as they were actively doing already at the state level while the filibuster prevented Senate Democrats from responding).

Sinema was still obsessed with proving her point and justifying her helpful years of obstruction. She wrote, confident that she wouldn’t have to actually face AOC in the Capitol: “Senate Dems have used the filibuster 2x in 2025 to stop bills. Perhaps we have a different definition of NEVER. I use the English definition: ‘at no time in the past or future; on no occasion; not ever.’” She later added that it was three, because she has a lot of free time.

The former wine intern is right: Senate Democrats have filibustered three bills this year: The first, on January 22, was “a bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.” The second, on January 28, was “a bill to provide that for purposes of determining compliance with title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 in athletics, sex shall be recognized based solely on a person's reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” The third, on March 3, was a “bill to impose sanctions with respect to the International Criminal Court engaged in any effort to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any protected person of the United States and its allies.”

I agree that Democrats did need the filibuster to block anti-abortion and anti-trans legislation, but I also agree with Ocasio-Cortez that Democrats should actually use the filibuster when needed against catastrophic bills like that continuing resolution. Mitch McConnell successfully filibustered a continuing resolution in 2021 until Democrats accepted “reality,” as he called it, and agreed to his terms.

McConnell, however, didn’t use the filibuster simply to patch holes in a sinking ship. It was part of an obvious strategy to deny Democrats any major legislative victories and ride a do-nothing Congress to electoral success for Republicans. Thanks to Manchin and Sinema, Democrats didn’t achieve anything truly big when they had the trifecta. (The bipartisan infrastructure bill was only passed with McConnell’s approval.)

Sinema mockingly posted last Friday, “Who has made the sprdsht showing: - senators/candidates on record to eliminate the filibuster - same senators who voted to filibuster today - bonus points for add’l column listing April 7, 2017 signers of letter to @SenMcConnell saying preserve the filibuster.” She added a few tub of popcorn emojis because the nation’s current condition is a source of great amusement for her.

The relevant question is whether Sinema would’ve voted against the continuing resolution or voted with her fellow institutionalist chumps who were scared of a fight. She never actually said as much, just as she hasn’t said anything about Musk’s hostile takeover of the federal government. Thousands of federal workers have lost their jobs in Sinema’s home state of Arizona. It doesn’t seem to trouble her.

Trump is shipping immigrants to authoritarian nations, trampling over the rule of law, and alienating our allies while aligning with dictators. Meanwhile, Sinema is only interested in saying “I told you so.” Neither she nor the filibuster serves the interests of democracy. Now, that she’s out of the Senate, Sinema has joined tech firm Coinbase’s Global Advisory Council, where she says she’s “looking forward to advocating for the 52 million Americans who have owned crypto.” As long as the price is right, she’ll continue defending scams.