Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) attacked numerous Republican lawmakers in an Instagram video that she posted late on Monday evening, describing their actions as “tactics of abusers,” which she compared to her claim that she is “a survivor of sexual assault.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s statement came after she claimed without evidence that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was “trying to get me killed” during the riot that broke out at the U.S. Capitol Building last month and that Cruz “almost had me murdered.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanding that Ocasio-Cortez apologize for her inflammatory allegation, writing: “If Representative Ocasio-Cortez does not apologize immediately, we will be forced to find alternative means to condemn this regrettable statement.”
In a video that ran over an hour long posted late on Monday night, Ocasio-Cortez claimed for the first time publicly that she was “a survivor of sexual assault.” She provided no details about the alleged incident.
“The reason why I think it’s important to share is because so many of the people who helped perpetrate and who take responsibility for what happened in the Capitol, are trying to tell us all to move on. And they’re trying to tell us to forget about what happened,” Ocasio-Cortez began. “They’re trying to tell us that it wasn’t a big deal. They’re trying to tell us to move on, without any accountability, without any truth telling, or without actually confronting the extreme damage, physical harm, loss of life and trauma that was inflicted on not just me as a person, not just other people as individuals, but on all of us as a collective, and on many other people.”
A few moments later, Ocasio-Cortez then teared up and said, “I’m a survivor of sexual assault. And I haven’t told many people that in my life, but when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other. And so whether you had a negligent or you know a neglectful parent, and or whether you had someone who was verbally abusive to you, whether you are a survivor of abuse, whether you experienced any sort of trauma in your life, small to large, these episodes can compound on one another.”
“And so when I see a party, who cheered on violence, violence that killed five, maybe now six people, a second Capitol Police Officer took their life in the aftermath of the attack this past week, when we are still losing people, when we don’t know how many people are going to develop PTSD, after what happened, when we don’t know how many people are still hospitalized,” she continued. “I mean, there are people who, sure they may not have passed away, but they lost fingers, they lost eyes. And these people are just trying to tell us, it’s not a big deal. And they’re trying to say, you’re making too big a deal over it.”
Ocasio-Cortez did not specify which Republicans had “cheered on violence,” as Republican officials, including President Donald Trump, condemned the violence and called for justice to be brought against those who committed crimes.
“Or my favorite this past week, Ted Cruz and now Representatives Chip Roy, and oh, by the way, some of the other representatives who actually encourage people to threaten members of Congress or tweeted out the location of the speaker, are not telling me to apologize for saying and speaking truth to what happened,” she claimed. “These are the tactics of abusers. Or rather, these are the tactics that abusers use. And so when I see this happen, how I feel and how I felt was not again, I’m not going to let this happen again, I’m not going to let it happen to me again, I’m not going to let it happen to the other people who’ve been victimized by this situation again, and I’m not letting gonna let this happen to our country, ever. I’m not going to let it happen.”
Ocasio-Cortez said that the reason that she wants Republicans to be held accountable is because “we know that if we do not hold people accountable, what they’re asking for when they say, ‘Can we just move on?’ Is that what they’re asking is, can you just can we just forget this happen so that I can do it again, without recourse.”
“And that’s what these folks are asking the folks who are saying we should move on,” she said. “We shouldn’t have accountability, etc. are saying, Can you just forget about this so that we can, you know, do it again? Because that’s what we’re asking when we don’t actually hold to account. And you know, in these past three weeks, I felt like it was important to give a window of opportunity, right? Maybe in some world, Senator Josh Hawley or Senator Ted Cruz, or Representative Mo Brooks would say, ‘You know what? I was mistaken. I did not fully realize what the impact of my actions was going to be. And now in retrospect, I see that it incited something that I never wanted to incite. And for that, I am sorry.’”
Ocasio-Cortez demanded that Cruz and Hawley resign because, she claimed, they “will endanger their colleagues, they will do it again.”