Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said she will not apologize to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, for accusing him of trying to have her “murdered.”
“That’s not the quote, and I will not apologize for what I said,” she said when asked about one of her tweets directed at Cruz last month, according to the New York Post.
In the tweet, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that Cruz “almost had me murdered” during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot because he challenged the Electoral College’s certification.
I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out.
Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed.
In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign. https://t.co/4mVREbaqqm
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 28, 2021
More than a dozen Republican House members have called on Ocasio-Cortez to apologize her remarks, calling them baseless and defamatory.
“It has come to our attention that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sent out a tweet in which she accused Senator Cruz, in essence, of attempted murder,” the Republicans wrote in a letter. “We believe this is completely unacceptable behavior for a member of Congress to make this kind of scurrilous charge against another member, in the House or Senate, for simply engaging in speech and debate regarding electors as they interpreted the Constitution. We ask you to call on her to immediately apologize and retract her comments.”
Ocasio-Cortez has also faced criticism for fabricating her account of the Capitol riot.
She claimed to have been cowering in fear as the violent dissidents closed in, but as Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., pointed out, Ocasio-Cortez’s office was not even in the same building as the Capitol rioters.