Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and I are both '80s babies who went to public schools, so it's probably true that we learned more geography and history from watching Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? or dying from dysentery while playing Oregon Trail than we ever did in a classroom. However, that's no excuse for the stupidity AOC spewed over in Munich this weekend.
As Matt wrote on Saturday, the aspiring New York senator and/or Democrat Presidential Candidate went to Germany to show off her super awesome foreign policy skills and rub elbows with the global elites, or, at least that was her intention. Instead, she just made a fool of herself. Here's more from Matt:
When asked whether the U.S. should commit troops to defend Taiwan if China invades, she froze. What followed was the kind of painfully incoherent word salad that would make Kamala Harris sound modestly coherent.
'Um… You know, I think that, uh…This is such a, uh, you know, I think that this is a, um...' she began. You could tell she was blindsided by the question, which exposed her complete lack of knowledge of foreign affairs. 'This is, of course, a very long-standing policy of the United States, and I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation. And for that question to even arise.'
Related: AOC Just Humiliated Herself on the World Stage
But just when we thought that was bad, it got even worse. The congresswoman decided she would defend Nicolás Maduro. The problem? She doesn't even know where Venezuela is and said as much.
"It is not a remark on who Maduro was as a leader. He canceled elections. He was an anti-democratic leader," she said. "That doesn't mean that we can kidnap a head of state and engage in acts of war just because a nation is below the equator."
First of all, he was not a head of state. Even the Joe Biden administration recognized that, but all of that aside, someone get this chick a map. No part of Venezuela is below the equator. It runs through other South American countries — Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador — but Venezuela is to the north of the line. I guess all those countries look alike to some people.
AOC: The US shouldn't engage in actions like the one against Maduro just because Venezuela is “below the equator."
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 16, 2026
Venezuela is not below the equator.
Got a round of applause anyway. pic.twitter.com/CMn9m154zZ
When you find out Venezuela is north of the Equator: https://t.co/AWbMzvQQBG pic.twitter.com/sJW1TQ5745
— Prison Mitch (@Prisonmitch) February 16, 2026
In case you missed it, Marco Rubio, who was the real star of the United States' presence in Munich this past weekend, took the stage on Saturday and gave an incredible speech on Western Civilization and how Europe needs to join the United States in the fight to save it in the 21st century. I wrote about it and quoted a lot of it on Saturday, but I left out this part, so let me share it before I get to more AOC idiocy. While talking about European influence on U.S. culture, Rubio said:
Our first colonies were built by English settlers, to whom we owe not just the language we speak but the whole of our political and legal system. Our frontiers were shaped by Scots-Irish – that proud, hearty clan from the hills of Ulster that gave us Davy Crockett and Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt and Neil Armstrong.
Our great midwestern heartland was built by German farmers and craftsmen who transformed empty plains into a global agricultural powerhouse – and by the way, dramatically upgraded the quality of American beer.
Our expansion into the interior followed the footsteps of French fur traders and explorers whose names, by the way, still adorn the street signs and towns’ names all across the Mississippi Valley. Our horses, our ranches, our rodeos – the entire romance of the cowboy archetype that became synonymous with the American West – these were born in Spain. And our largest and most iconic city was named New Amsterdam before it was named New York.
Apparently, AOC didn't like the entire speech, claiming, "You are starting to see the ascent of the right, even in places like Munich. Marco Rubio’s speech was a pure appeal to Western culture."
Uh, why wouldn't it have been? That's who we are. That's like being offended that Rubio went into a nursing home and made a speech aimed at older people.
But then she gets real stupid. "My favorite part was when he said that American cowboys came from Spain. I believe the descendants of Mexicans and African enslaved people would like to have a word on that."
Did Mexican people and slaves influence U.S. cowboys? You bet. Did cowboy culture originate in Mexico or Africa? No. The Spanish made it happen. There weren't even horses in the Americas before the Europeans brought them over. But don't take my word for it. Here is more from the (usually center-left-leaning) History.com:
Hundreds of years before there was the American cowboy, there was the vaquero, an expert horseman who could adeptly herd cattle and whose skills with a lasso were legendary.
First trained by the Spaniards who arrived in 1519, on land later known as Mexico, the original vaqueros were largely Indigenous Mesoamerican men who were trained to wrangle cattle on horseback. 'It’s a forgotten history of centuries of horsemanship in the Americas that root the vaqueros to the colonial past,' says Pablo A. Rangel, an independent historian who has extensively studied the history of the vaqueros.
Derived from the word vaca (Spanish for cow), the vaqueros would become renowned for their skills and adaptability as Spain expanded their North American empire westward from what is now Texas, Arizona and New Mexico to the Franciscan missions in California by the late 1700s. In the years before cattle branding and modern ranching styles became prevalent, Rangel says, the work of vaqueros was essential in a society where food supplies were often scarce and the cattle imported from Spain often broke free.
Either AOC is too dumb to understand what Rubio meant or thinks her audience is too dumb to correct her when she makes things up and rewrites history. What followed after that was a Western culture word salad that would make even Kamala Harris proud:
But, you know, I think it's also important to know how thin that foundation is. Culture is changing. Culture always changes. Culture, for the entire history of human civilization, has been a fluid, evolving thing, that is the response to the conditions that we live in. And so, they want to take this mantle of culture — at the end of the day, though is, you know, it is very thin. And so, the response that we have to have is, again, it's material, it's class-based, it's common interest. There was certain more openness to what I was saying than probably there would be in years past. We can't underestimate the appeal of going back to these well-worn grooves. A lot of what we talk about when we talk about a class-based international perspective also means ending the hypocrisy toward the global south.
If she's saying what I think she's saying — that one's hard to untangle — she's kind of making Rubio's point. "Culture always changes" because the people within it do not defend it.
Related: Rubio’s European Tour Heats Up — WaPo and the Cuban Revolution Take a Beating
And I'm so over the use of "global south" as if it's some kind of compassionate political term, when the reality is that it reduces the countries included into one big lump based on wealth, instead of acknowledging that these are sovereign nations with their own histories and cultures. Again, I guess all those countries look alike to certain people.
And Latin America makes up a big portion of the so-called "global south," but, as we've been watching for months, those countries are now electing leaders who will help them rise above socialism, crime, and corruption and align more with Western values. They want what we're having, but AOC and her friends want to force garbage down their throats.
The congresswoman's trip to Munich proved two things. 1) The left doesn't care anything about the people it claims to. It would rather spread its ideology than face the reality on the ground. 2) AOC as a potential presidential candidate in 2028 may be the best thing that can happen for the GOP.
Want to support conservative media? You can do so by becoming a PJ Media VIP member. It's less than $20 for the entire year, and you get some cool perks too. We'll see you in the comments section!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member