Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said she is in therapy as a result of the January 6 Capitol riot, or what she described as an “all-out, attempted coup,” pointing figures at the Trump administration and contending it “had a lot of us, especially Latino communities, in a very reactive mode.”
Speaking to the radio show Latino USA on Friday, the far-left Democrat said U.S. lawmakers effectively “served in war” and explained she “took some time” after the event. She confided in fellow “Squad” member Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), who told her she needed to “recognize trauma.”
“After the 6th, I took some time and it was really Ayanna Pressley when I explained to her what happened to me, like the day of, because I ran to her office and she was like, ‘you need to recognize trauma,'” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“And I feel like I learned this the hard way after my father had passed away when I was a teenager … That happened at a young age and I locked it away. You have to live with it for years,” she continued, explaining she is in therapy due to the January 6 event.
“Oh yeah, I’m doing therapy but also I’ve just slowed down,” she said. “I think the Trump administration had a lot of us, especially Latino communities, in a very reactive mode.”
Recalling the event, Ocasio-Cortez described how former Vice President Mike Pence was taken out of the chamber a mere minute before “these terrorists, insurrectionists got into the Senate chamber.”
“Pence was the one person, arguably, that had one of the most important roles in making sure that procedurally the Electoral College counts went on as proceeded,” she said.
“Sixty seconds could have meant potentially the difference between what we have right now and a martial state,” the far-left lawmaker continued. “This was an all-out attempted coup.”
“If 60 seconds went differently, if a different door was opened, if a chair wasn’t barricaded in a certain way, we could have a completely different reality right now,” she added. “We don’t want to acknowledge that that’s how close we got, but that is how close we got.”
Weeks after the event, Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram, identifying herself as the victim of sexual assault and adding that the January 6 riot traumatized her further.
In the video, Ocasio-Cortez said, “I thought I was going to die” and criticized those who sought to move past that day.
“They’re trying to tell us to move on without any accountability, without any truth-telling, or without confronting the extreme damage, loss of life, trauma,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“The reason I say this, and the reason I’m getting emotional is because they told us to move on, that it’s not a big deal, that we should forget what happened, or even telling us to apologize,” she said, adding those are the “tactics of abusers”:
AOC recounting her horrifying experience hiding in her office during the insurrection.
“I thought I was going to die…I have never been quieter in my entire life.” pic.twitter.com/t2P6FU3mFU
— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) February 2, 2021
More than 400 people have been charged in connection with the January 6 protest.
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