Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez incorrectly stated on Sunday that Venezuela is “below the equator” while she criticized President Donald Trump’s administration for capturing former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
Ocasio-Cortez argued at Technical University of Berlin’s TEDx event that the administration could not engage in a so-called “act of war” simply because Venezuela is south of the Equator, though Venezuela is located north of the equator. The U.S. captured Maduro in a special operations mission called Operation Absolute Resolve on Jan. 3 and charged him in Manhattan with narco-terrorism and cocaine importation conspiracy, weapon offenses and corruption.
“We look at what happened in Venezuela for example, it is not a remark on who Maduro was as a leader. He canceled elections, he was an anti-democratic leader, that doesn’t mean that we can kidnap a head of state and engage in acts of war just because the nation is below the equator,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
During the event, Ocasio-Cortez also attempted to ridicule Secretary of State Marco Rubio for factually stating that Spanish settlers influenced the modern cowboy culture in the Americas. Horses were brought over to Mexico by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés in 1519 during the invasion of the Aztec Empire, and later settlers trained indigenous populations to wrangle cattle on horseback to maintain their ranches in places like Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.
Ocasio-Cortez received widespread backlash from conservatives online and reportedly canceled her scheduled media appearances, according to The Huddle’s Dan Turrentine. He also noted that none of her political allies came to her defense and that she was not ready to enter the world stage.
The congresswoman did not rule out possibly running for president in the 2028 primary during her appearance at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.
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