President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vanceroasted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) over the way she answered questions at the Munich Security Conference, saying it “was not a good look for the United States.” Ocasio-Cortez, who many believe is gearing up for a 2028 presidential bid, got slammed across the board for making a series of foreign policy gaffes during the event.
During one instance, Ocasio-Cortez — also known as AOC — seemingly stalled for a whopping 20 seconds after she was asked if the U.S. should send troops to help protect Taiwan from a potential invasion by China. Another major gaffe came after she made the claim that Venezuela is below the equator. “By the way, I watched AOC answering questions in Munich,” the president said.
“This was not a good look for the United States. I watched Gavin Newscum answering questions in Munich, and this was a bad look for our country,” President Trump said while on board Air Force One. “This was bad — these two people are incompetent, and at least Hillary is competent. She’s just Trump deranged. She was so deranged and she is an angry woman.”
“Look, Gavin has destroyed California, and AOC I never really got her, I never heard her speak very much and they started answering questions. She had no idea what was happening,” Trump added, making a reference to Newsom and Clinton’s attendance at the conference. “She had no idea how to answer, you know, very important questions concerning the world. But she can’t answer questions concerning New York City either, because New York City [has] got some problems,” Trump said about AOC.
According to Fox News, a spokesperson representing Newsom fired back and told the outlet that, “Donald Trump is on his knees for coal and Big Oil, selling out America’s future to China. Governor Newsom will continue to lead in his absence. Foreign leaders are rejecting Trump and choosing California’s vision for the future.” AOC was asked by the press, “Would and should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move?”
In any case, AOC, who has served four terms in Congress, stalled for almost 20 seconds before saying the U.S. should try to avoid getting into a fight with China over Taiwan. “This is, of course, a, a very long-standing, policy of the United States, and I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise,” Ocasio-Cortez stumbled.
The New York congresswoman then made the claim that Venezuela was located “below the equator” while slamming the Trump administration for sneaking into the country and arresting the country’s dictator, Nicolas Maduro. “It is not a remark on who Maduro was as a leader. He canceled elections. He was an anti-democratic leader. 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,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters.
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Trump wasn’t the only one who ripped into AOC for her answers to foreign policy questions during the conference. Vice President JD Vance made an appearance on Fox News in which he also slammed the New York Democrat for her embarrassing gaffes. “I think it’s a person who doesn’t know what she actually thinks,” Vance told Fox host Martha MacCallum.
“I’ve seen this way too much in Washington with politicians, where they are given lines, and when you ask them to go outside the lines they were given, they completely fall apart,” Vance continued. “Because look, does anybody really believe that AOC has very thoughtful ideas about the global world order or about what the United States should do with our policy in Asia or our policy in Europe?”
“No,” he stated matter-of-factly, going on to say, “This person who is mouthing the slogans that someone else gave her, and that shows how thin the Democrats’ policy actually is on all these very important questions. Look, that was embarrassing. If I had given that answer, I would say, ‘You know what, maybe I ought to go read a book about China and Taiwan before I go out on the world stage again.'”
“I hope that Congresswoman Cortez has the same humility. I’m skeptical,” he concluded. President Trump was not yet finished with his appraisal of Gov. Newsom and AOC, going on to publish a post on Truth Social that continued to give voice to his disappointment with the pair, saying, “AOC and Newscum were an embarrassment to our Nation.”