Following accusations her account of her personal experience during the Jan. 6 attack was not as dire as she portrayed in an Instagram post, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lashed out at South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace for saying the New York Democrat was never in any danger that day.
Mace told Ocasio-Cortez, in a tweet, Thursday morning:
Hold up ✋
You seem to be triggered by facts so let me be clear:
I have not ONCE discounted your experience. It was harrowing for all of us.
FACT: Insurrectionists weren’t in our hallways. It’s your eagerness to politicize absolutely ANYTHING that deserves condemnation. https://t.co/9wXruBQfi0
— Nancy Mace (@NancyMace) February 4, 2021
“I think that she’s trying to make it seem as though the account said something that it didn’t,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Washington Examiner, noting her Instagram post is the true account of what happened to her that day.
Mace later tweeted, “There were no rioters in the hallways of Cannon. I’m 2 doors down from you..She doesn’t deal in reality she hasn’t been doing that today.”
AOC disagreed.
“When you have someone in a position of leadership like that, whose immediate instinct is to minimize or kind of launch dishonest attacks, and trying to fact-check things that survivors didn’t even say or claim, it’s extremely damaging,” Ocasio- Cortez said. “This is one of the reasons why I pushed very early and sent out a letter, which, ironically, Mace supported. It was my initiative to try to get counseling to some service workers, but then to turn around and do this undercuts all of that effort.”
According to her account on Instagram, Ocasio-Cortez says on the day of the Capitol assault, a staffer ran into her Cannon office and urged her to hide. At that point, she ran into the bathroom and heard banging on the door outside.
“Where is she? Where is she?” a person screamed, Ocasio-Cortez said in her Instagram post on Monday. “And this was the moment where I thought everything was over.”
The person banging on the door was a U.S. Capitol Police officer attempting to relocate her to a secure location, but Ocasio-Cortez, in a previous account, believed she was going to die. Ocasio-Cortez says she and her office are in conversation with the sergeant-at-arms in regard to that particular Capitol Police officer.
“I am not here to ascribe intent or anything like that. My [Instagram Live] account was to talk about how I experienced what had happened, so there were certainly things that were concerning — the fact that there weren’t repeated announcements, identifying themselves, etc.,” she told reporters. “But as a human being who was also there, I know how traumatizing that day was. I’m not here trying to have it out for anybody, but I do think it’s important to tell the story of what happened. That’s really my intent.”
