LEESBURG, Va. — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that attacks from Republicans and their allies in conservative media are “not normal” and have sparked an “incitement of violence against progressive women of color.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks came in response to a question about the New York Post’s front page, criticizing Rep. Ilhan Omar (R-Minn.), a Muslim woman and outspoken progressive, for saying in a speech that “some people did something” on Sept. 11, 2001.
Omar’s point was that not all Muslims were responsible for the 9/11 attacks, just the select few who carried out the attacks. The Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch, put a photo on the front page of the Twin Towers exploding and the headline: “Rep. Ilhan Omar: 9/11 was ‘some people did something … Here’s your something: 2,977 people dead by terrorism.”
GOP lawmakers piled on as well. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) tweeted that Omar, his fellow freshman colleague, was the “First Member of Congress to ever describe terrorists who killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 as ‘some people who did something’. Unbelievable.”
But Ocasio-Cortez told reporters Thursday that the type of rhetoric aimed at her, Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and others was extremely dangerous and getting out of hand.
“This is getting to a level that is beyond politics or partisanship,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters at a Virginia resort where House Democrats were gathering for their annual policy retreat. “The level to which Republican and conservative groups, whether they are official party apparatuses sending out emails, calling me and others domestic terrorists, or whether it’s Rupert Murdoch and the New York Post printing on the front page to circulate all around New York City an image that is incredibly upsetting and triggering for New Yorkers that were actually there … to elicit such an image for such a transparently and politically motivated attack on Ilhan …”
She continued: “We are getting to the level where this is an incitement of violence against progressive women of color. And if they can’t figure out how to get it back to policy, we need to call it out for what it is because this is not normal and this is not a normal level of political debate or rhetoric.
“As wild as it can get sometimes this is something beyond what is normal.”