Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Warns Trump Admin If They ‘Lay a Finger’ on Members of Congress ‘We Are Going To Have a Problem’

After watching that video, there already is a problem. Assaulting an elected official is a felony and the ICE officer that did this needs to be up on charges.

What? You don't have a problem already? Stop drawing lines. They've already crossed enough of them.

The Democrats have shown that they intend to continue to lose and will not take meaningful action to protect the public, it’s pathetic

Yeah! Don't touch our members of congress! Throw everyone else in jail, but not our most passionate public servants! /s

Ma'am, with the greatest and utmost possible respect, the rest of the world submits that you people already have several problems.

There are going to be so many furrowed brows.
I hope they don’t need to write another Strongly Worded Letter!
- I’m honestly more mad at the Dems at this point for just continuing to do nothing while the right runs roughshod over the law and the people.

Hold up - they participated in the protest? Or they showed up and required a tour of the facility, which is their right as federal lawmakers?
What I saw indicated only the latter? Did they actually participate in the protest?
- I have no idea but whether they did or not is irrelevant.
  Protesting is constitutionally protected speech even for lawmakers, and has no bearing on their rights as elected officials to tour those facilities.

Do something that would warrent the GOP being hostile tward you, maybe.

If you come for my constituents, stop no...
If you come for our mayors, that's unfortunate.
Threaten our governors? So sad, horrible, can nothing be done?
Come for me? We're going to have a problem.
None fo the Dems are going to do shit until they come for them directly, a year after it's too late to do shit.
- dude we should all be rioting at this point. shit is so fucked.
  
  The oligarchs have the population exactly where they want them to be: poor, unhealthy, divided and unable to mount a concrete unified resistance.
  
  You first 🤷‍♂️
  I get this seems flippant but truly, I see so many "we need a general strike" and "we should be protesting/rioting" comments but whenever a protest or something is done people go "look at the neolibs patting themselves on the back" from the safety of their keyboards.
  What have you done lately? What have any of us done lately? We're all sitting around waiting for someone else to go "get out there and do it!" It's not going to happen. We have to organize. And here's the unfortunate truth: Organizing isn't sexy. It takes a LOT of work and you get told "no" a lot. I find it very hard to participate sometimes. But we all have to do it rather than smash our keyboards about it.

Tell me, did she also sLaM him? I'm fucking sick of this posturing, do something already
- Ugh there's so much of this obnoxious shit on YouTube. "Person A DEMOLISHES Trump in front of Setting B!" And then the video is literally just someone saying the same shit everyone is saying and Trump isn't even there. Or like "Watch Republican mortified as they realize they screwed themselves by electing Trump" and there's literally zero self reflection or regret.
  There are so many videos and headlines that are literally just feeding on the clickbait potential of people waiting for a substantial response to this complete mess. Hypothetical dunking on people who aren't even in the room or don't react at all isn't the victory people seem to like to advertise it as.
  And then they like fully miss an actual town hall in a Republican district booing the shit out of some MAGA toolbox.
- I mean, I doubt he'd refuse her offering to SLAM him, I think there was no such offer.
- I was about to write they need to make an offense first.
  But you are right, they already did that, by preventing legal oversight.
  That shouldn't be allowed to pass.
  
  And 1000 other things. It's long past time for them to "have a problem". Put up or shut up AOC.

If the trump admin goes after congress members, they're going after the Squad first so most democrats will be on board.
- Democrats are the Leopards Eating Faces Party, Republicans are Let Leopards Run Free Without Regulation Party.
  Every time they give Republicans an inch, they'll take a mile. And then publicly cry "Giving them a mile was a mistake, we wanna walk back a foot!"
  If AOC is targeted, wanna bet enough Democrats vote yes to remove/arrest her in appeasement of Trump, thinking they'll be saved?

If the bar has to be that high given everything they have already done, then perhaps you are living in an oligarchy.

Oh a big problem!? Like what exactly? What are going to do against a group of people who laugh at the supreme court and dont follow court orders? All they can do is send a strongly worded letter and say "Shame shame". We are already a dictatorship these other branches have no power other than for optics.
- I really like AOC but what will congress or the courts do? They will do nothing and continue to do nothing. Even if Trump and the DOJ go after GOP law makers Congress and the courts will do nothing.
- Guillotine?
  
  These are dems... She's probably going to throw some wicked shade. Perhaps a sarcastic clap? Devastating!
- So many. The people on the left are gutless and ineffective.
  You're way past the point of being able to do anything. Maybe some more protests would have helped. They were super effective.
  We still talk about the clown convoy. Yet nobody can make one of the left's protests even though there is one a week.
  And now people can't help but say the left can't do anything because...... They don't want to.... Because it's already a dictatorship.... Because .. Because... Because.
  Meanwhile the right are marching in the streets armed and beating the shit out of drag performers at brunch. They're communicating and organizing on Twitter and Reddit and Facebook. It's just so asymmetrical the amount of effective effort, actions and behaviors one side is able to muster over the other.
  AOC is right and should have support by people showing up and making the government eat their words. This is authoritarianism. But nobody is out there putting the work in. It's a heading, an article then it disappears into the ether only for us to react to the next news headlines tomorrow. Nobody is making anything stick and that's on us.

Hooray for more posturing! Really nice that this current administration has shown without a doubt that our entire system is full of spineless garbage that really will do nothing to balance power, which is literally why those branches of government exist. Yes AOC is a firecracker and more verbal than most. Yes, she drives change and is a speaker for a the people. But without any backup from the entirety of our gov, she's just a megaphone yelling into a void.
- That'd be the humanity.
  Any system without wide popular involvement turns into shit.
  Wide popular involvement requires simplicity and small number of levels, and ability to ruin and rebuild any part of the state apparatus quickly. So it's limiting, but those limits are liberating, one can say.
  At the same time there are no good systems for that wide popular involvement, one would have to pick between Switzerland and the idealized Soviet system, neither is perfectly functional.
- she’s just a megaphone yelling into a void.
  That makes you the void...

But mayors are totally kidnappable?
https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/newark-immigration-baraka-ice-arrest-w02968

If he does that, all solutions should be on the table. Including second amendment solutions.
- it's long past time for violent solutions but we are all talk.
  
  Don't speak for others
- stop pushing the goal post... 2a solutions were more than justified 2 two weeks after the clown took over the circus
  
  Yeah I can't help but read this headline and think "the line they crossed" was kidnapping people and shipping them off to a Salvadoran concentration camp. Who gives a fuck if they're representatives, we're supposed to be a democracy.
- By who? Whose going to do that?
  
  You. You, the people. Canada is doing it with boycotts which are deeply hurting the US. We didn't have to be told to do it. Nobody organized. We just did it.
  There is nobody coming to save you so you have to do it yourselves.
  
  You and me, brother.
- 2a is for "white" people. That's how we got here.
- Ok so co bread passes something but what difference will it make. Trump and Co are breaking laws left and right with no consequences. They’re taking bribes, ignoring Judge’s ruling and there are no consequences.
  It’s a a joke at this point.

Now maybe I'm being pedantic here but this does seem to slightly suggest that the ordinary citizens being kidnapped off the streets, and sent to death camps...whoops, I mean 'prison', without any legal support is not a problem?
However the upper class fools doing absolutely fuck all to stop the ordinary people being abducted by the us's Gestapo being fingered by tRUMP and his cronies is a step too far?
I like her. Don't get me wrong. She seems to be a good one. Speaks her mind etc etc but if she, and the congress people, would've had a problem about the little guys being taken on broad daylight then there wouldn't be any need to have a problem about her unpoors being fingered!!
Remember the German poem:
First they came for the poors but I did not speak out for I am not poor.
Then...
- many members of Congress have been fighting for the people that have been and are being targeted.
  
  Define "fighting for".
- What are you even on about? She's been one of the few that's been talking about it non-stop. Tell me you've not been paying attention and are only interested in grandstanding without telling me..
  Also, I will never take anyone seriously that types out "tRUMP."
  
  HiTlErPiG

You should already have a problem.
- How many red lines have been crossed now? I like AOC but the Democrats and Congress aren't going to do shit if they haven't already.
  
  Seven red lines. All of them strictly perpendicular. Some with green ink and some with transparent.
  
  The problem is the old fart democrats and a few DINOs combine to make it so there just isnt enough of a voting block to actually make anything happen. It sucks right now but the whole point of congress is to require a majority consensus in order to pass legislation. Frankly the fact is it was structurally designed to be slow because the founders of the constitution were tired of King George and now we're bearing witness to what happens when we need it to respond.
  
  I used to like her, but she's seemingly going career politician and is voting with lobbyists instead of advocacy groups and all her public statements are just talk. She's becoming what she got into politics to prevent..
- They do. They can’t do anything through Congress, but they’re helping the ACLU get the cases through the courts. If they go after a member of Congress, that member can personally press charges on the administration. That is her point.
  
  And then it gets escalated to the fascist Supreme Court and dismissed.
  Law is a dead end.
- It's a figure of speech. She's aware.

AOC reminding Americans how to be brave. Penny auctions were a thing, which implied Americans used to be able to stand up to corrupt oligarchs and monied interests. Where is that solidarity and sentiment now? Do Americans need to be poor again altogether in order to rise up?
- The key to the penny auction was intimidating speculators and outside interests from scooping up property being auctioned away.
  Good luck intimating a Blackrock agent at a sheriff's auction in the modern United States. You're not going to scare off a trillion dollar oligarch and a paramilitary police state with pitchforks
  
  Blackrock agent at a sheriff's auction? That's cute you think you would even get that opportunity in the days of online auctions. How exactly are you supposed to intimidate someone bidding on the internet thousands miles away?
  
  The people of Worcester, Massachusetts prove that the powers-that-be should not be feared.
  https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/fed-up-crowd-in-massachusetts-swarms-ice-agents-attempting-to-arrest-mother/ar-AA1EttWd
  https://whdh.com/news/hundreds-rally-for-release-of-woman-arrested-by-ice-in-worcester/
  
  Now they would have the auctions online, and there would be no opportunity to intimidate them.

except you got enablers like schumer and hakeem bending the knee to the megadonors.
- As long as they are Pro-Israel, Schumer will gleefully bend the knee.
- They are behaving exactly like controlled opposition, at this point I could care less about how much they actually are or aren't controlled opposition, what matters is their action or rather lack of it is catastrophic.

I’m so ready for the problem. Pleeeease let me be a problem on these evil Nazi Republicans.
- Bring your nunchucks
  
  let’s goooooo
- What exactly are you actively doing to fight? All you people are just bitching here but I see no one proposing actions besides dweebs like you posturing that 'you'd totally take to the streets right now'.
  Y'all are mostly little bitches.
  
  I donate massive amounts of money to destroy people like you. That’s what I do.

You can't defeat an enemy that you refuse to fight.
I'm sure the Democrats will take every legal avenue available to them. However, if they run out of legal, nonviolent options, they're going to be in a very rough spot because they don't have any other arrows in their quiver.
- Its the DNC, not the IRA. What else do you expect from them?
  
  What else do you expect from them?
  Very little.
  I don't expect AOC and her octogenarian colleagues to strap on an assault rifle and go full commando, but they do need to recognize what the Republicans are already well aware of: not all conflicts can be resolved peacefully.
  The Republicans are more than willing to use all tools at their disposal to achieve their goals. If the Democrats are not, then they are putting themselves at a severe disadvantage.
  
  To give a fuck about the rest of us
  
  I expect them to continue working alongside and collaborating with overt fascists. Always has been.

AOC 2028. Fuck the republican traitor filth.
- Fun to think about, but American males are not ready for a strong female presence in their lives. They can't handle it.
  I would love for AOC to show the world her fire and Americans some grace. Not going to happen with the lot in America right now sadly.
  
  Disagree. I think that the failures of Harris and Clinton have a lot more to do with campaign and messaging failures than they do with the fact that they're women. We're living a populist moment, and the democrats want to rise to that with "noooo lmao everything's fine, you're not actually struggling at the grocery store shut up lol. Nooo we can't offer a real policy platform to vote for, just vote against Nazis for the rest of your life and hope we never lose (we will, and we'll blame you)."
  They're GOING to fuck this up in 2028 if we even have elections, and they're not going to let anyone stop them from fucking it up, not even AOC or David Hogg. Right now, Gavin Newsom is leaning hard into giving himself a republican-lite glow-up so that he can run the Newsom/Pence ticket in 2028 and try to peel off a whole six moderate republicans. Their campaign platform will be:
  Bulldoze the homeless (now with BIGGER dozers!)
  shut up, don't worry about it, just keep voting against Nazis for the rest of your life and hope we never lose (we will, and we'll blame you)
  
  This take is SO dumb, did you completely ignore that Hilary won the popular vote?
  
  This misogynist BS is soooo tired. Michelle Obama would have easily crushed Trump. But the dems serve capital better by losing.
  https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4753294-michelle-obama-donald-trump-joe-biden-democrat-2024-hypothetical-matchup-survey/
  
  I don't know if American men are ready for it, but neither Harris nor Clinton were strong presidential candidates, and not because of their gender.
  
  Male here. Hillary was probably the worst female option who's ever ran for president.
  Kamala wasn't much better, and felt like a rush job to prevent Biden being an easy sweep.
  Not that I'm advocating for trump in either case. I'm just saying its like the old south park joke of douche vs turd sandwich.
  Only difference is that AOC is actually a good choice. Whereas Hillary and Kamala were never good choices.
  I would fully support an AOC run. I would vote FOR AOC. Whereas with Hillary and Kamala it felt like it was voting against trump by selecting "whoever the opposition is".
  Which for the record, isn't a gender thing. Biden was also "not trump" on the ballots in 2020. You didn't vote FOR Biden. You voted AGAINST trump.
  
  You need to rephrase that as “falsely ex-MAGAt American males who will immediately vote Republican next election despite claiming they were moving a sub from it for our sympathy and so they wouldn’t face the consequences they deserve” aren’t ready…
  
  People are downvoting you, and as much as I would like it to not be true, you are right. There's too many male dems I've talked to that didn't vote for Kamala because she was a woman. It was shocking, and disappointing to say the least.
  So I can't, in good conscience, downvote you, because you're not wrong, as much as I don't like it.
  Edit: I also should have expected people also downvoting me just because they don't like the message. I don't like it either, but downvoting me does not make it less true. I voted for Hillary and Kamala and campaigned for them both, so don't downvote me just because I'm the messenger of observations about shitty behaviors I've encountered among my fellow dems.
  
  Hell, plenty of American women aren't either.
  
  What a sweeping generalization!
  
  Maybe stop with the strawman argument and you'd get a bit further. Myself, and I'm sure plenty of others, are really sick of being painted as a villain before even entering the conversation. All you're doing is furthering the divide, not shortening it.
  I see it all over Lemmy - angry liberals painting the opposition as vile and inhuman. Making all these strawman up. Makes other liberals not want to associate with you. Makes you seem just like the people you vilify.
  You want a society of love and acceptance? Start with yourself. Create a happy accepting vibe around yourself and make it grow from there. But don't salt the ground and then wonder why nothing grows.
  Edit: hey geniuses downvotting me and calling me conservative scum: I'm a registered Democrat. Thanks for proving my point with more strawmen. You assume that if someone disagrees with you they're immediately a MAGA Nazi instead of someone who legitimately disagrees with your methods and actions. You taint the discourse just as much as your opposition.
- She's great- but she's not the revolutionary leader you need to do what's necessary. She's the person you need AFTERWARD to pick up the pieces.
  
  Why not?
- I like the fantasy and I wish that's where we were at, but please just give me a boring middle aged white guy. The people who love AOC the most apparently just aren't going to show up at the polls in numbers. It's a problem we've been talking about since I was the one not voting and we were blaming it on the way they treated green party candidates (I know, probably even longer). There's a new excuse every few years, but there always is one and it doesn't look like it's changing any time soon.
  Please, let's throw the old people a bone and give them an easy choice so we all don't have to suffer again. I hate having to think about 'electable' too, but let's just do that astronaut guy they were pushing for Harris' running mate, they'd love that guy.
  
  The people who love AOC the most apparently just aren't going to show up at the polls in numbers.
  Cite your sources here
  
  We just had a boring middle aged white guy and he spent his entire abandoned campaign pushing for genocide. Dems never learn basic humanity.
  
  I feel like those people are never going to vote though. The communists and socialists will be too busy going on about bourgeoisie this and that and won't be satisfied unless Marx himself is running because no one else is good enough. And the anarchists will go going "why should I take this opportunity to fight fascists if I'm not getting my perfect anarchist utopia out of it? Don't vote, it'll go against your perfect idealism." Just like they did this last time around.
  I think that Bernie Sanders showed us that people who don't have ideological sticks up their asses will be willing to vote for something better that gets us all a little bit closer to utopia, even if it's not perfect yet. And as a non-American, I think AOC has that same infectious energy. But of course, as a non-American, I might also be underestimating how much Americans hate women and brown people.
- Why doesn’t she already have a problem? I was hoping AOC would be leading the charge, but she’s more like a background character.
  This screams “it doesn’t matter until it’s me.”

You had had a problem for decades. Stop pretending there's some red line that you won't allow them to cross.

That's a good threat, but what happens when nobody backs it up? You just know that establishment Dems will sit it out and people are not going to do anything. So what then?

I'm willing to chip in for t-shirts:
- Can we stop doing anti-trans "I identify as..." jokes?
  
  They started as pro trans.

So this thread has
people upset the party with no power has no power
people suggesting violence for others
defeatists who haven't digged their suicide hole yet
What's new that I missed?
- suggesting violence for others
  Social media will always have a selection bias of inaction because once someone crosses that line, they'd be a fool to post online about it.
- the party with no power has no power
  They have the same power that the other party manages to regularly fuck stuff up with, yet can't seem to pull of anything even remotely close
  Gonna keep pretending they're not to blame or what?
  
  Exactly my thoughts too. They have to get creative to do it. They need to adopt to the new climate.
- So far Trump needed a bunch of traitors among the Democrats to pass things such as his budget. Claiming the Democrats would have no power is a lie. They choose to use the power they have to enable Trump rather than to fight him. Otherwise they would have kicked people like Schumer out already.
- I just figure people are venting. AOC posts aren't really the right place, though. I like her videos, and she does give my students hope for what it's worth.
  
  They don’t need hope. They need to realize if they don’t fight now there won’t be a future for them.
- The Lemmy trifecta
- Don't forget people denying a member of Congress was caught on video commiting simple assault and obstruction of a federal law enforcement officer.
  https://youtu.be/v4iQV8lgPUM
  Federal simple assault
  Obstruction
  Nobody is above the law. There are procedures for oversight and bypassing those procedures are no different for a member of Congress than a typical citizen committing the same acts outside of the same position. Bypassing lawful procedure is not okay, regardless of political affiliation, and should not be tolerated.
  LaMonica McIver is up for re-election in 2026.
  
  There was no assault in the video; further, congress people have every right to enter and examine detention facilities and those ICE agents were illegally refusing them entry.
  I get that just going "THAT'S ILLEGAL!!!!!" Is meaningless and quaint but it still needs to be pointed out when it happens.
  
  Bypassing lawful procedure is not okay
  Like how ICE is just straight up kidnapping citizens?

I'll radicalize with her.

"suggested" they "may pursue"... wow. Did they fire six shots or only five? Y'know, in all that excitement, I kinda lost track myself.
- This is trump's final chance before he gets SLAMMED.

She said, he said........Just storm the capitol, easy! 4 years of US politics with trump killing freedom. Please nooo.

Will they hold up little signs? Wear red cause they’re mad? AOC needs to wake the fuck up and realize her party has zero credibility
- Maybe they'll sit on steps or talk for really long! Pure RESISTANCE!!! Fire up the B4SE!!!! \s
  https://www.blackagendareport.com/cory-bookers-boot-licking-butt-kissing-and-buck-dancing-zionism

are they gonna carry 2 signs per person as a means of protest or what?

But everyone else is fair game...go for it.
- Well, they already arrested a mayor. So the message is don't take another step.

Democrats are so cute fighting Trump. I'm afraid the people will have to battle this by themselves sooner than later. Or maybe not, like Argentina.
- AOC and Sanders are legit. I agree with you on establishment democrats though.
  
  They are legit, but I don't think they are very different. I see their rallies all over the USA, but they lack the planning, and if they do have a plan, they are failing to communicate it to the people. Also, Sanders is Independent, AFAIK.
  
  This.

Yes they will.

there already is a ton of problems. she’s toothless and a moron. her party is nothing more than republican-light these days anyway.
we need actual changes.
- I'll admit she phrased this poorly but she's one of the best representatives we've got on our side. What's your plan?
  
  My plan is to vote for folks who are not democrat or republican; as they both support exploitation, financial instability, genocide, and general capitalist concerns.
  All things that are destructive to working class people. Some more than others, of course.

All politicians are worthless.
- Yes, everyone, check out and just let things happen. Stop participating.
  
  Checking out and letting things happen is primarily for people who believe in politicians. It's for people who believe in voting. Just vote for your team every couple years and you'll be a "good citizen". It's a major foundation of the state.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion
- Yes, the concept of "representative" government is a complete scam and inversion of democracy.