AOC Recounts Fearing for Her Life During Capitol Insurrection
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been quiet on social media following the attack on the Capitol on Jan
Photo: Flickr/Ståle Grut NRKbeta
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been quiet on social media following the attack on the Capitol on Jan.6 and now she’s sharing some details about that day. In an hour-long Instagram video she opened up about fearing for her life during the insurrection by Trump supporters in protest of the election results. She also called out Republicans in the House and Senate including Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who voted to try to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s win after the attack saying they should resign their seats as well.
“We were very lucky that things happened within certain minutes that allowed members to escape the House floor unharmed,” she said. “Many of us merely narrowly escaped death.”
AOC didn’t reveal many specifics due to security concerns but she did share the fear she felt amid the chaos partially due to unnamed members of Congress who supported the siege.
“There were QAnon and white supremacist sympathizers, and frankly white supremacist members of Congress, in that extraction point who I have felt would disclose my location and would create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped, et cetera,” she said.
“I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive, and not just in a general sense but also in a very, very specific sense.”
She emphasized it was not an exaggeration to say that members were “nearly assassinated” and cited a distrust for certain unnamed officers working in the Capitol. CNN reported that two Capitol police officers were suspended and at least 10 were being investigated for alleged participation in the riot.
“As we saw, there were members of capital police who were quite heroic. We have many officers and there were also black and brown officers that were confronting white supremacists and putting themselves, not just to protect members, but they put themselves in harm’s way on the front line, facing the racist violence of white supremacists ordered by Donald Trump to attack the Capitol. And so there were those acts of heroism,” she said.
“But next to that, there was also acts of betrayal. And to run in the Capitol in our nation’s capital and not knowing if an officer is there to help you or to harm you is also quite traumatizing.”
Ocasio-Cortez said she was confident Trump would be impeached, calling the president “an active threat to every single American” and a “traitor.” She also said Hawley and Cruz cast their vote to overturn Biden’s win out of “political ambition”.
To some of my colleagues who clearly need the reminder: the Confederacy were traitors to our democracy and white supremacists will never win. 🌞
If any of you has trouble with that, maybe you should resign because you’re not ready to run an ant farm, let alone serve in Congress. https://t.co/fiQIVobZNv
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 13, 2021
“Let me give you a sneak peek,” she said addressing both of them directly. “You will never be president. You will never command the respect of this country, never. Never. And you should resign.”
