Politics

AOC denounces anyone engaging in online vitriol after Trump’s victory — Democrats included

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

AOC denounces anyone engaging in online vitriol after Trump’s victory — Democrats included

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hosted a postmortem of sorts on her Instagram account over the weekend, using the platform to connect with voters over Donald Trump’s election victory and how to best prepare for the days and years ahead.

At one point, in response to a question about Democratic infighting and the post-election rancor more generally, the New York Democrat denounced those who have been all too eager to engage in malicious finger-pointing after the election.

Despite the fact that Trump ran a campaign steeped in white racial grievance and the fact that MAGA influencers were literally calling for white men — specifically — to g et out to the pollssome commentators have resorted to tired takes about Kamala Harris losing because the party lean ed too much into “identity politics.”

The Democratic ticket didn’t actually lean into identity politics, but some in the party have settled on that line of thought as well — such as Reps. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., and Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who suggested that Democrats’ support for trans people’s rights helped spell their doom this cycle.

Without naming names, Ocasio-Cortez said on Instagram:

This is a not insignificant problem. It’s interesting that we are in a cultural moment where, on the left and the right and the center, there’s just a certain cache and reward to being an a–hole. And yeah, we’ve seen it on the right — we also see it on the left. And I actually think that we need to be paying more attention to how a person is, because a lot of people use righteous or popular causes as an excuse or a smokescreen to let out their worst impulses or the ways that they wish they could treat people. And I think we need to pay a lot more attention to that in terms of deciding how to trust and who to trust as we move forward. I think it’s a really big deal.

I agree. I do think a lot of liberals are spending far too much time trying to score cheap political points when it would be far more productive for them to be girding their constituents and the country against the looming Trump presidency — and all the illiberalism it could entail. That criticism actually extends to one of Ocasio-Cortez’s top allies in the Senate — Bernie Sanders — as well.

AOC basically wanted to refocus people’s attention on what lies ahead, although she did take time to ask for feedback from people who voted for her and for Trump. She also spoke about how misconceptions among immigrant communities — including documented citizens who voted — helped benefit Trump.

And she said some people still don’t seem to grasp what a Trump presidency is likely to mean:

I think a lot of people were finding out this week what a tariff meant, that a tariff is not what China or some other country pays — it’s what you pay. What we pay. I think a lot of people aren’t ready for mass deportations and what that means. One in every 15 people in this country lives in a mixed-status family. So that means that we’re talking about one in every 15 people potentially having their families broken apart. I don’t think we’re ready for that, including what that means for the economy. I don’t think we’re ready for the censorship that is coming, and for a whole lot more. But our job right now is to get ready, and to prepare.

What does that preparation look like? Ocasio-Cortez said she’s still taking a moment to process her plan. But she said she’ll personally be “doing a lot more direct communication” — i.e., methods other than social media, which can be overrun with unverified claims and outright propaganda.

“I think I’ll be planning on using my email list to give a lot more thorough and specific things about what’s on my mind and how to prepare for things,” she said. And she encouraged her followers to get out of their online bubbles:

My recommendation is to join and enter community right now: whether it is church, or your knitting circle, or mosque or temple, or whether it is joining … New York City DSA [Democratic Socialists of America]or Working Families Party, an interest group — get into physical community.

For those in despair, she talked about intentional joy being a radical act of defiance.

“I mean, listen: The fear is telling us something, but I also want to underscore how important it is during this time — that it actually is important to be intentional about living, and living fully, and bringing joy into the day to day. And loving on the people who you love,” she said.

“There’s like this scolding culture sometimes where it’s like, if someone dares to be happy in public, people want to, like, pounce on them. We are actually going to need that now more than ever — not in some gauzy, you know, bubble-gum, kind of like ‘deny how bad everything is’ kind of way, but that cultivating it is a tool of our survival.”

Ya’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is The ReidOut Blog writer. He’s a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”

Politics

Kennedy and Wright cheer on US

Published

13 minutes ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The U.S. delegation in Seattle includes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to a FIFA official, along with White House FIFA World Cup Task Force czar Andrew Giuliani. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were among those who attended the U.S.’ first match, against Paraguay.

Politics

The politician who kicked his way to power

Published

42 minutes ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Britain wouldn’t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer.

Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.

The pivotal moment of Burnham’s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-PM Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough Disaster.

The 1989 event remains Britain’s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.

The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.

Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway — and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team’s loudest supporters congregate. (The video of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)

Burnham — until then a typical career politician in Westminster — has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners — of police failures and a scandalous cover-up — had been true. The government was forced to apologize.

Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. “I always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,” he wrote in his memoir, “Head North,” penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. “Things were never the same after that day.”

Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.

Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position — an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is regularly photographed jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It’s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.

Read Jack’s Blue Light News Magazine profile of Andy Burnham here and Blue Light News’s full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here.

Politics

The US-Australia face-off that isn’t happening

Published

1 hour ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?

If they’re following the match, the two countries’ elected heads — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — are doing so from afar.