By The Daily Caller (U.S.) | Created at 2026-08-10 16:36:29 | Updated at 2026-08-10 19:25:27
4 hours ago
Democrat New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised eyebrows in a recent interview after she decried the very same “woke” policies she once supported.
Ocasio-Cortez was pressed about Democratic candidate Francesca Hong, who is running for Wisconsin governor, over past “woke” tweets calling to abolish prisons and the police. When asked about Hong’s past remarks, Ocasio-Cortez laughed it off and said, “Woke 1 was crazy!”
“I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy!’ And I think what’s important is that we have to assess what are candidates saying now,” Ocasio-Cortez stated. (RELATED: ‘DSA Is Our MAGA’: The Democratic Establishment Faces A Reckoning)
Despite Ocasio-Cortez’s efforts to distance herself — and Hong — from Hong’s past comments, she herself defended and even promoted the same views just six years ago. Hong previously declared “police exist to uphold white supremacy” and argued that “reform can’t be an option.” She also repeatedly advocated to defund the police as the first step to ultimately abolishing the police.
Ocasio-Cortez later went on to attribute the rise of wokeness to COVID lockdowns, calling the 2020 political climate and discussions “fruitful.”
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“During this time, and especially during COVID, there was a huge opening of the Overton window,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We were shut down. There was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the doors were really opened in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place.”
“I actually think that the discussions that were had during that time were quite fruitful,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “I think that when we talk about crime today, it’s fundamentally different than the way we talked about crime and bringing down crime.”
Just five years before brushing off “woke” politics, Ocasio-Cortez objected to that very same label, calling it a “derogatory euphemism for civil rights & justice.”
“Making up a ‘woke’ problem results in putting civil & voting rights on the backburner,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a 2021 post on X. “In a year state legislatures are planning out GOP majorities & voter suppression, that’s dangerous.”
