On Instagram Live Tuesday night (Jan. 12), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) detailed her personal experience inside the U.S. Capitol last week when pro-Donald Trump rioters stormed the building during the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral votes. She also had some strong words for her Republican colleagues who, she says, have enabled Trump’s bad behavior for the last four years.
First, Ocasio-Cortez described the insurrection as an “extremely traumatizing event” for her. Citing security concerns, she wasn’t able to disclose the full details about her experience, but did say she was not sure if she would “make it to the end of that day alive.”
“I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die,” Ocasio-Cortez says during her livestream. “It is not an exaggeration to say that many, many members of the House were nearly assassinated.”
Ocasio-Cortez says she and her fellow Congress members were lucky to have escaped the House floor that day as a large group of Trump supporters overwhelmed Capitol police, infiltrated the building and roamed the halls of Congress where they destroyed property and created chaos. Some demanded to know the whereabouts of Congress members like Nancy Pelosi.
Even when she was led into a safe area inside the Capitol building, Ocasio-Cortez says she didn’t feel safe because she was in lockdown with “white supremacist members of Congress” who she felt would “disclose her location” and “create opportunities” to get her hurt. Ocasio-Cortez referenced a congressman from Colorado who she says called the rioters “my people.”
Referring to Trump as “a traitor to our country” and Trump enablers as “cowards,” Ocasio-Cortez blamed them for the attack on the Capitol and the deaths of five people that day, including a Capitol police officer.
“Those five people’s blood is on your hands,” she says. “They are forever stained with the deaths of five people. They care [more] about preserving the social order and the mythology of whiteness than the grandeur of our democracy.”
It’s probably safe to assume how Ocasio-Cortez will be voting on impeachment today.