In an attempt to explain why she cried on the House floor after switching her vote against funding for Israel’s Iron Dome to a “present” vote, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seemed to accuse her colleagues of physically threatening her.
“What we saw is a disappointment of just a willingness to rip our communities apart and put member safety at risk,” she told the Independent on Friday when asked about the vote.
To be honest, it’s a bit difficult to make out what this sentence even means. But clearly, Ocasio-Cortez is trying to tie her safety and the well-being of other liberals to the vote on Iron Dome funding.
Perhaps she thinks this is the best way to excuse her own vote, which she changed at the very last minute to “present” to avoid having to take a legislative stand on the issue one way or the other. Or maybe Ocasio-Cortez is trying to pin the blame on her fellow lawmakers, almost all of whom opposed the “Squad’s” attempt at derailing the funding package.
Given Ocasio-Cortez’s affinity for performative self-victimization, she’s probably trying to do both. She doesn’t want to own up to the fact that she caved to political pressure. She wants everyone to believe the rest of Congress, including members of her own party, are out to get her. It’s always everyone else’s fault, never hers.
She needs to grow up. Not one person’s safety was put at risk during that vote. What did happen is that she and some of her other buddies who opposed the Iron Dome funding were rightly called out for peddling antisemitic rhetoric. And if she can’t handle some well-placed criticism, she ought to consider whether she’s in the right profession.
