Did AOC Exaggerate the Danger She Was in During Capitol Riot?

In the aftermath of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., took to Instagram Live on Feb. 1, to relay her personal account of how the events of that day had traumatized her.

One theme covered in her retelling of those events was how her past experiences with trauma, particularly surviving sexual assault, had compounded her fear during and after the Capitol riot.

“I’m a survivor of sexual assault. And I haven’t told many people that in my life,” she said toward the beginning of her story. “But when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other.”

Ocasio-Cortez also observed that it’s a painful fact for many survivors of trauma that they must deal with people who try to minimize what they experienced when they tell their stories, in an effort to silence them.

It took less than 48 hours for the right-wing disinformation machine to contrive a way to minimize what Ocasio-Cortez said she had experienced.