AOC Blames Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg For Capitol Riot – ‘He Is Part Of The Problem’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) spoke out on Friday to slam Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, hitting him with some of the blame for the Capitol riots last week.

“He is part of this problem,” Ocasio-Cortez said during an online town hall meeting with Bronx and Queens constituents. “And Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook bear partial responsibility for Wednesday’s events, period.”

She went on to claim that Zuckerberg has coddled white supremacist groups on Facebook, and even, she alleged, attended “dinner parties with white supremacist sympathizers,” according to The New York Post.

“They specifically treated this type of radicalization differently, aka with kid gloves,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to her contentious exchange with Zuckerberg in a congressional hearing in 2019.

“I asked him specifically about disinformation related to the election … and the link between that disinformation and white supremacist ties,” she said. “We saw what was coming for a long time.”

Ocasio-Cortez has long claimed that Facebook’s use of the conservative news outlet the Daily Caller in its fact-checking efforts is evidence of Zuckerberg’s sympathy toward white supremacists. The Daily Caller has disputed this, calling her claims “offensive.”

“There’s a very clear link here,” she said.

“Currently they’re doing as much damage control as possible,” Ocasio-Cortez added, referring to Facebook banning President Donald Trump from their platform. “But they knew. And not only did they know, but they allowed it.”

This comes days after Ocasio-Cortez claimed that she thought she “was going to die” in the Capitol riots last week after a “close encounter” shook her to her core.

“I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a lengthy video posted to Instagram. “Not just in a general sense, but in a very, very specific sense.”

“I can tell you that I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die,” she added. “And you have all of those thoughts where, at the end of your life…all of these thoughts come rushing to you. And that’s what happened to a lot of us on Wednesday and I did not think – I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive.”