Glib Barista AOC’s Ignorance Front and Center at Munich Security Conference
Victor Davis Hanson /
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
Jack Fowler: Why would Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez be invited to an international security conference? It boggles the mind. What gravitas she has.
Victor Davis Hanson: Because she’s gonna run against Chuck Schumer for Senate, and she thinks she’s going to win, and then she thinks she’s going to, either in 2028 or in, I don’t know, 2030, 2032, she thinks she’s going to run for president. And moreover, she thinks that the Europeans, after the Greenland incident, are angry at President Donald Trump and therefore, they’re gonna be very receptive to someone like her who’s gonna come in and, like Hillary Clinton did there, and trash him.
But the problem she has is twofold. She knows nothing. Nothing. She doesn’t know anything. She was a barista that was kind of cute and glib, and she got elected in a surprise win where nobody really took her seriously. And then she went into the Latina DEI and “the squad,” and she never did any homework. She doesn’t know anything.
So, when they ask her a question about the defense of Taiwan—how long will we have an audience if you asked me just now about AOC and I act and I answer you like AOC did?
I would say, “Jack. Um, well, uh, of course, as you know, it’s a very important question you asked. Uh, you know, uh, Jack, uh, and I’ve been thinking about the, the, the, the conference, and it’s important, and we worry about it. And it’s something, um, you know, you know, that, uh, um, that I, um, I’ve thought a lot about.”
Fowler: Right.
Davis Hanson: Well, we wouldn’t have an audience, and we shouldn’t have an audience in about 24 hours. Well, that’s what she did. She didn’t know anything about Taiwan. She knows nothing of the history of Taiwan. She doesn’t know the history of the Korean War. She doesn’t know the Nixon administration’s crisis with the islands off—she didn’t know anything about that. And so, she thought she was gonna have a presence, and she kind of, it kind of boomeranged.
The other problem she had, the twofold, the second was, the Europeans are foxy, cagey. They’re not stupid people. They’re some of the smartest, most skilled, self-interested people in the world.
Every time I talk to—you know, I think I’ve been to Europe almost every summer for 40 years. Every time I talk to a European, I always say to myself, this guy or this woman is the most, I don’t mean sneaky, but the most sophisticated, complex, careful, 500 alternate agendas, subtext. Why aren’t these people running the world like they used to? Because they’re very educated. You know what I mean?
But the point I’m making is, their boilerplate about Trump is not the same about their subtext about Trump because they know deep down inside that Trump was right. That they, as former President Barack Obama called it, they leech off us. He said they were freeloaders, to be specific. And they have more people than we do. They have about 150 or more million people than does the United States. And yet they have no armament.
And this was the embryo of the Western military tradition. And you know, they destroyed Europe twice. And when a Western army fights a Western army, it’s horrific, as they reminded us.
So, they understand that they need deterrents. They understand that what former German Chancellor Angela Merkel did in Germany ruined the continent almost.
They understand that Islamic populations are not acculturating, assimilating, integrating. They know all that.
They know that you don’t really base an economy on Germany, in Germany, on solar power. Every time I’m there, I clap my hands when I see the sun, you know, for five minutes.
So, my point is that when she went over there and schmoozed with everybody and thought she was gonna get—all she appealed to was the far left and maybe some opportunistic Europeans that would like to use her.
But deep down inside, the idea that Trump is creating this huge economy, that he is gonna build up the military, that he’s gonna confront China, and that for all of his talk about backing out of Ukraine, he’s still there, they understand that. And what he did with Iran, they approve. And if he takes out that theocracy, they will talk about imperialism and undeclared wars and, you know, brinkmanship. But they will like it. And she doesn’t understand that.
Well, Hillary too, Hillary was there, remember? And she attacked, she attacked a Czech diplomat, kind of, and said that—
Fowler: He got into it with her. Yeah.
Davis Hanson: And he said, you don’t like Trump. He said, no, I don’t. And then he was really good. And he was an illustration of what I’m talking about, it was much more nuanced. He understood that Trump—there was a reason why the head of NATO called Trump “daddy.”
Fowler: Well, we saw again why she was unelectable also.
Davis Hanson: Unelectable.
Fowler: What a harpy.
Davis Hanson: That’s a euphemism. Well, a harpy. You know, harpies were mythological creatures, you know, at Lake Stymphalus.
Fowler: I’m sorry to detract the Stymphalian birds by comparing them to her.
Davis Hanson: Yeah, that’s what I meant. I’ve been to Lake Stymphalus and the Stymphalian birds were, remember, one of the laborers of Hercules, and you see them on red and black figure, contemporary pottery of the fifth century. And they’re grotesque figures. But I would say that it’s unfair to them to compare them with Hillary.
Fowler: My apologies.
Davis Hanson: Medusa’s a better mythological.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.