Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., dismissed her and other socialist politicians' far-left rhetoric as a thing of the past, but conservative opposition was not persuaded.
ABC's "This Week" host Jon Karl asked Ocasio-Cortez to comment on Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong's controversial past comments — including calling for Thanksgiving to be canceled or for prisons to be abolished — some of which she has tried to backtrack on as she seeks the Democratic nomination in her state.
"I have a local city councilman that has this saying, 'Woke 1 was crazy,'" Ocasio-Cortez said while laughing. "And I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now."
This received swift backlash from many conservatives.
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ SHRUGS OFF PAST 'DEFUND THE POLICE' COMMENTS, JOKING 'WOKE 1 WAS CRAZY'
"It sounds a little desperate to claim that you can't hold a politician accountable for something wacky they said less than six years ago, and a call to cancel Thanksgiving is among the wackiest," Tim Graham, the Executive Editor of NewsBusters at the Media Research Center, wrote in an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital. "Hong has inveighed against not just Thanksgiving, but Valentine's Day, the Fourth of July, and Halloween, and she found Christmas triggering,"
"Once a radical Democrat wins a primary, the party strategists are going to try to make their candidate sound more moderate to voters who don't pay a lot of attention to politics," he added. "So they will try to claim outrageous statements are already out of context and out of date, even if they're not. Tweets like Hong's aren't about policy in 2026, but they can still suggest that her temperament isn't ready for prime time."
Manhattan Institute Vice President and Pollster Jesse Arm spoke to Fox News Digital as well, saying there is one key question Democrats need to answer.
"The obvious question for AOC and her allies is: Which views from ‘Woke 1’ do they actually think were crazy? Sex-change operations for children? Biological men in women’s sports? Race-based discrimination in hiring and admissions? Decriminalizing theft? Refusing to prosecute repeat offenders? Open borders? Debt forgiveness? Banning private health insurance?" he said.
SOCIALIST LEADER SQUIRMS DURING TV INTERVIEW WHEN FORCED TO ADDRESS PUSH TO ABOLISH PRISONS, POLICE
"The problem is that they haven’t renounced any of it — and they don’t intend to," Arm continued. "After voters delivered a pretty decisive rejection of the ideological excesses of early 2020s, many leftist politicians now attempt to laugh off the era as ‘crazy’ without acknowledging their own role in it or identifying which of their substantive positions they now reject."
Arm recalled one key example of how Democrats’ climate alarmism, even in the late 2010s, looked tone-deaf.
"AOC herself provides a revealing example. In 2019, she was telling young people that the world was going to end in 12 years because of climate change. Now she’s talking about starting a family in the 2030s. I’m glad she expects a future," he said. "But it would be nice if the politicians who spent years convincing a generation of young Americans that they had no future would acknowledge that some of the things they said during ‘Woke 1’ weren’t just crazy — they were deeply and dangerously wrong."
CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF MEDIA AND CULTURE
Commentators on social media added their takes as well, such as Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, who replied to footage of Ocasio-Cortez's interview by saying, "You don't get to spend years pushing to fundamentally transform the country, divide it on racial lines, inject DEI into every institution, and then try to brush it off as a minor misunderstanding when your worldview turns out to be extremely unpopular with the American people."
"We waged war on woke because ultimately woke represented a war on truth," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis replied. "Now, we have a prominent leftist acknowledging that Florida was right to reject the woke mind virus."
Conservative commentator Ryan James Girdusky quipped, "'Woke 1 was crazy' new cop out for insane positions held as recently as yesterday."