US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke at a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) rally for Gregorio Casar on February 13th in Austin, Texas, an event that the John Brown Volunteers attended. During the speech, CPI’s Keaten Mansfield confronted AOC, exclaiming,

“You refused to fight tooth and nail against the Iron Dome funding, you refused to condemn the slaughter of Venezuelans, you refused to stand with President Ortega! You’re a traitor to the people of America and the people of the world!”

Keatens confrontation was met with heavy chaos in the audience, and AOC began to rhetorically weasel her way out of criticism.

“Let’s talk about it, let’s talk about it,” AOC spoke over the crowd, “Let’s talk about it because… I don’t believe in elephants in the room. Let’s speak on it because we are all here, in solidarity, to fight for human rights for Palestinians and Palestinian kids… So, if we care about this, my brother, if we care about it, we gotta be about it.”

The crowd once again erupted, and Keaten was compelled to push back against the obfuscation. Keaten responded, “You refused to vote no! $1 billion to the Iron Dome, $1 billion to kill Palestinians.”

AOC was quick to shut Keaten down, speaking over him and moving on to the next topic without having directly responded to anything Keaten brought up. The level of word gymnastics and ability to weasel out of questions displayed by AOC are signs that she is no different than the establishment Democrats she is supposed to fight. Her interests are identical to corporate interests.