U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the target of Congressman Paul Gosar’s animated video that depicted him murdering her, spoke on the House floor Wednesday afternoon ahead of the final vote that will make him one of the few members of Congress to have ever been censured.
“AOC,” as she is called, did not direct her remarks to Gosar so much as she berated House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who spoke just before her.
McCarthy used his time to speak on the motion to attack Democrats and President Joe Biden over gas prices, Afghanistan, and the economy, while falsely claiming that censuring the Republican member from Arizona is “unprecedented.”
“What I believe is ‘unprecedented,'” Ocasio-Cortez said in response, “is for a member of House leadership of either party, to be unable to condemn incitement of violence against a member of this body.” she said. “It is a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong, and instead decides to venture off into a tangent about gas prices and inflation. What is so hard what is so hard about saying that this is wrong? This is not about me. This is not about representative gozar but this is about what we are willing to accept.”
“This nihilism runs deep. And it conveys and betrays a certain contempt for meaning and importance for the work we do here.”
Watch: