Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) this weekend accused Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of applying a stark double standard in her comments made after the killing of Alex Pretti by a federal agent during an anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis, the second such death in the city this month.
In one part of an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, which has gone viral with almost 3 million views on one X post alone, Ocasio-Cortez sharply criticized Noem’s suggestion that people should not attend protests with firearms, arguing the stance clashes with the Trump administration and conservatives’ fawning over previous armed protesters on the political right.
Pretti was a legal gun owner who was licensed to carry a concealed weapon. Minnesota law allows permit holders to carry firearms in public, including at protests. The government’s claim that he was armed and provoking violence is at odds with videos and witness statements circulating publicly.
Ocasio-Cortez said: “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?”
“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,” she continued.
The New York Democrat argued the message that is being sent is solely 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 lawmaker also warned: “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 added. “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.”
