AOC compares herself to war veterans after her Capitol riot exaggerations backfire

After Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Capitol Hill riot exaggerations backfired, the young lawmaker has now likened herself to war veterans who have experienced trauma on the front lines.

The controversial Democrat at first intimated that she was facing a pro-Trump mob in the halls outside her office when rioters stormed the Capitol building. However, it was revealed that Ocasio-Cortez wasn't present at the time of the attack on Congress, and that her office is in another building entirely.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) pointed out Tuesday that her congressional office is two doors down from Ocasio-Cortez's in the same hallway of the Cannon House Office Building (Cannon HOB), which is accessible to the Capitol via tunnel system.

The Republican congresswoman also noted that "insurrectionists never stormed" the area at any time. She called out the New York representative for her "egregious" testimony blasted across social media platforms.

Following the widespread fact check that caught the congresswoman either misrepresenting or directly lying about her whereabouts during the Jan. 6 event, Ocasio-Cortez is now comparing herself to combat veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"All I can think of w/ folks like her dishonestly claiming that survivors are exaggerating are the stories of veterans and survivors in my community who deny themselves care they need & deserve bc they internalize voices like hers saying what they went through 'wasn't bad enough,'" Ocasio-Cortez said of Mace on Thursday morning, questioning "who else's experiences will you minimize?"

Mace apparently is a survivor of rape herself, and has spoken about that. A 2019 article in the Associated Press reads " For more than two decades, Nancy Mace did not speak publicly about her rape... when she finally broke her silence, she chose the most public of forums—before her colleagues in South Carolina's legislature."

"For some of us who have been raped, it can take 25 years to get up the courage and talk about being a victim of rape," Mace said before the legislature. "My mother and my best friend in high school were the only two people who knew."

Ocasio-Cortez named the Capitol Police officers, the food clerks, and the custodial workers who cleaned up shards of glass in the aftermath of the Washington attack. Ocasio-Cortez claimed that these personnel all "ran for their lives in Longworth or feared for their families in the weeks after the attacks" and "now think their terror is less valid because of [Mace's] statement."

"Mace's attacks are attacks on them, too," Ocasio-Cortez argued.

"This is where the true damage of what @NancyMace is doing comes in. How many survivors are watching her? Who now, seeing her, won't get care or will feel further shame or silence? Who won't speak up bc they know there are voices in leadership ready to minimize their experiences?" Ocasio-Cortez pivoted.

"Trauma is real. I've watched veterans weep as they processed grief on ayahuasca. As they mourned friends who died in their arms. You are a fraud who put on trauma 'black face' to mock those who have experienced nightmares in service of this country. You have lost your soul," conservative commentator Mike Cernovich tweeted in response.

Ocasio-Cortez has since claimed that it was Trump supporters who planted the two pipe bombs that surrounded the Republican and Democratic National Committees headquarters on Jan. 5. The perpetrator has yet to be identified and apprehended by federal authorities—let alone the culprit's political affiliation.

"We were all on the Capitol complex," she interjected the truth with her narrative, insisting that the attack "wasn't just on the dome." That's when Ocasio-Cortez scrambled to justify her fear, alleging that Trump supporters had planted the bombs that "surrounded our offices too."

Meanwhile, her hysterical riot fiction prompted #AlexandriaOcasioSmollett to trend on Twitter. The hashtag referenced the infamous hate crime hoax perpetrated by Empire actor Jussie Smollett in 2019.