Veteran political reporter Mark Halperin warned on Monday that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) may have dealt a fatal blow to her own aspirations of winning the presidency at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.
In Munich, Ocasio-Cortez was asked if United States should dispatch troops to aid Taiwan should the island nation be invaded by China.
The New York Times covered her response like this:
Questioned about whether the United States should send troops to defend Taiwan if China invaded the island, she stalled for roughly 20 seconds before offering a substantive response.
“I think that, uh, this is such a, a — you know, I think that — this is a, um — this is of course, a, uh, a very longstanding, um, policy of the United States,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said, before saying that the country should try to avoid reaching that point with China in the first place.
On Monday, Halperin made note of both Ocasio-Cortez’s answer and the Gray Lady’s story about it.
“I think. you know, giving AOC a slot may go down in history as one of the bigger mistakes she’s ever made if she wants to be president,” argued Halperin.
He continued a few moments later:
It takes a major screw-up for The New York Times to put in their story about AOC that she had, I think they said it was a stumble or something. Had to be a really bad stumble. Yeah, and I will say, and again, I’m gonna talk about this at great length on Next Up, you cannot go to these things having gone to tutorial, and have a briefing book, and memorize your answers. If she doesn’t feel in her bones what America’s role should be vis-a-vis Taiwan, it’s never going to work. Now, she could have done a better job memorizing the answer they gave her, but that’s what I think is so instructive here about what happened. She has no feeling in her bones about Taiwan. She just thought, “Well, I’ll go with a memorized answer.” And I don’t think even the Democratic Party will make somebody the nominee if they can’t answer that question.
Watch above via 2Way on YouTube.
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