Pelosi Dismisses Ocasio-Cortez's Latest 'Concentration Camps' Remarks
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t seem to be all that bothered after one of the more vocal progressive members of Congress appeared to compare U.S. holding centers at the southern border to Nazi-run concentration camps.
In an Instagram video Monday night, democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York claimed, “the United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are.”
Ocasio-Cortez falsely claims Trump is operating concentration camps, compares the situation to the Holocaust: “The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are. … ‘Never Again’ means something … we need to do something about it” pic.twitter.com/F2MmZ8y2dT
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) June 18, 2019
“If that doesn’t bother you … I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘never again’ means something,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
But Pelosi appeared nonplussed.
“These members of Congress, they come to represent their districts and their point of view and they take responsibility for the statements that they make,” the California Democrat said Wednesday at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, according to the New York Post.
“I’m not up to date with her most recent remarks,” Pelosi told reporters. “I saw them on the news, but I haven’t spoken to her about that.”
In fact, Pelosi appeared to blame Republicans for blowing Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks out of proportion.
“I do have some comments to make to my caucus writ large about the political nature of how politically charged the atmosphere is so, understand that while the Republicans have no interest in holding the president accountable for his words, they will misrepresent anything that you say, just if you have one word in the sentence that they can exploit,” Pelosi said, TheBlaze reported.
Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks did earn her plenty of criticism.
“Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history. 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust,” Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming tweeted. “You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this.”
Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history. 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this. https://t.co/NX5KPPb2Hl
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) June 18, 2019
But it wasn’t just Republicans who seemed to think the remarks were inappropriate.
After MSNBC host Chris Hayes came to Ocasio-Cortez’s defense, the Auschwitz Museum’s official Twitter account suggested that he follow them for a history lesson.
“Please consider following @AuschwitzMuseum where everyday we commemorate and educate about the tragic human history of #Auschwitz,” the account tweeted.
@chrislhayes Please consider following @AuschwitzMuseum where everyday we commemorate and educate about the tragic human history of #Auschwitz.
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) June 18, 2019
The vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, meanwhile, extended Ocasio-Cortez a personal invitation to tour a detention facility.
“She needs to come down here, I’ll offer to show her myself the area,” Border Patrol agent Art Del Cueto told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer on Tuesday while appearing on “America’s Newsroom.”
“It’s disgusting to compare concentration camps to what the men and women are doing here protecting our country,” he added.
“She used the extermination of six million people. She used the phrase ‘who are concerned enough with humanity to say that “Never Again” means something,’” Hemmer said. “Has she ever been to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem? Or Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland? Or Dachau in Germany?”
But Ocasio-Cortez herself has refused to apologize,
“This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying,” she tweeted Tuesday.
“And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps,” Ocasio Cortez added in a follow-up post.
And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps.
Concentration camps are considered by experts as “the mass detention of civilians without trial.”
And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
“Concentration camps are considered by experts as ‘the mass detention of civilians without trial,'” she said. “And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.”
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