Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had the perfect response to comments made by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, calling out Noem for suggesting that anyone who attends a protest with a firearm is asking for trouble and could well wind up getting hurt.
Speaking with CNN host Jake Tapper, Ocasio-Cortez noted, “How rich is it that she is saying showing up to the scene of a protest with a legally owned weapon should be grounds for a person’s death, execution at the hands of the state, by the same party and the same administration that praises Kyle Rittenhouse?”
Noem did indeed criticize Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti, who was murdered by Border Patrol agents over the weekend and was legally carrying a semiautomatic pistol at the time.
“When she [Noem] is talking about how merely showing up and inciting violence based on ideology against the government, when this administration has pardoned hundreds of Jan. 6th rioters who have then gone out into the streets and recommitted crimes of violence over and over again,” the congresswoman added.
The message being sent by Noem, Ocasio-Cortez continued, is simple and purely political.
“What Secretary Noem is saying is not that you can’t do these things, is not that you can’t be armed, is not that you can’t attack your government. She just thinks that you can’t do that based on your political affiliation.”
“The uncorking of chaos that this administration is trying to attempt against the American people is escalatory, it is dangerous and it is a complete abdication of leadership.”
“We cannot go down this road,” Ocasio-Cortez warned. “We cannot have countrymen against countrymen, citizen against citizen. This is not the America that we believe in. It is not the America that we stand in and we must unite together against this kind of very dangerous splintering that they are seeking to incite against people and divide us.”
With each day, we get new horrors from the Trump administration. They are killing our fellow citizens for merely speaking out against draconian policies. Their only goal is to gain more power and subjugate the people. That is tyranny, and it cannot be allowed to take hold in this nation.
