WASHINGTON — Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back at critics of her recent gaffe-filled attempt to show off her foreign policy bona fides in Germany, contending it was proof she thinks before she speaks.
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was noticeably hoarse as she responded to the blowback she received after stammering over a question about how the US should respond to a hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan is due to the public being conditioned to President Trump’s impulsiveness.
“If you think I don’t understand foreign policy because out of hours of discourse about international affairs, I pause to think about one of the most sensitive geopolitical issues that currently exists on Earth,” she said in an Instagram story.
“I’m afraid the issue’s not my understanding but rather the problem is perhaps you’ve gotten adjusted to a president that never thinks before he speaks and doesn’t care about the implications of his words before he speaks on matters like these.”
The Bronx and Queens rep’s trip to the Munich Security Conference earlier this month was widely interpreted as an attempt to show off her foreign policy knowledge as she tests the waters for a 2028 run.
She later spoke at a Technical University of Berlin panel, where she suffered another faux pas, erroniously claiming that Venezuela sits below the equator.
“He [Nicolas Maduro] was an anti-democratic leader,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the time. “That doesn’t mean that we can kidnap a head of state and engage in acts of war just because the nation is below the equator.”
Ultimately, it was her stammering over the Taiwan issue during the Munich Security Conference that had drawn the most scrutiny.
“Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is, this is of course a very longstanding policy of the United States,” the congresswoman said in response to a question from moderator Francine Lacqua of Bloomberg TV.
“What we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point.”
Trump later chided that the fumble was “career-ending.”
During the fallout from her gaffes in Germany, Ocasio-Cortez vented against the backlash she weathered, telling the New York Times that it was an effort to “distract from the substance of what I am saying.”
“Everyone’s got this story wrong, that this is about me running for president,” she insisted to the outlet. “I could give — whatever, about that, to be honest.
“The story is less about the opponents being some hypothetical primary. To me, my opponents are the network that links [Viktor] Orban, Trump, [Javier] Milei, [Jair] Bolsonaro, all of these folks.”
Critics argued that the foreign policy slip-up isn’t a one-off.
Shortly after his meteoric political rise during the 2018 blue wave cycle, Ocasio-Cortez struggled when pressed about the Israel-Palestinian conflict during an interview on PBS’ “Firing Line.”
Ocasio-Cortez remains the fourth-highest-polling contender three years out from the 2028 Democratic presidential race, according to the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls.
Despite Ocasio-Cortez’s recent faux pas, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) predicted that the country will have a “severe reaction” to Trump in 2028 and may even elect her president.
“I hope that severe reaction will demand character and normalcy. Not seen as a philosophical reaction. If we get a philosophical reaction, we’re going to end up with AOC as president, no joke,” Christie said during a “Principles First” event.
“She went to Munich because she’s thinking in her head ‘I want to be president.’ And who can blame her? She’s watching Trump. The standard for being president has diminished fairly significantly.”
