By Jeffrey Blehar
Monday, February 16, 2026
The 2026 Munich
Security Conference concluded over the weekend and, well . . . it certainly
wasn’t the worst historical result to ever come out of Munich, so let’s have
a round of applause for the collected diplomats of the West! Marco Rubio gave a
well-received address (essentially playing “good cop” to JD
Vance’s “bad cop”), telling Europe that while we love them and all, America is
no longer interested in helping them “manage their decline.”
But of course I wasn’t paying much attention to the
international politics of it all. I was watching elected Democrats run around
Munich like hogs seeking a slop trough, desperate to sit on panels, give
speeches, and take interviews from the international media about The Situation
back home in Trump’s America. You fly to Munich, as a domestic elected
politician, for one reason only: You’re thinking about running for president.
This isn’t news with regard to California Governor Gavin
Newsom; everybody knows he’s running for president, and if you don’t mind he
would love just a few minutes of your time to explain personally that “Donald Trump is temporary.” (Guess who he thinks should
replace him?) For that reason alone, his comments while in Munich were entirely
perfunctory and drew few headlines. You know what you’re getting from Gavin,
and you’ve known for a long time now.
But it was news for Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the superstar New York City progressive and foundational “Squad”
leader. Her appearance in Munich marked the first time she has ever stepped out
at a high-profile foreign policy event outside the country — she sat on two
separate panels while there — and had the feel of a public audition.
Ocasio-Cortez, like her or not, has a fierce following among young and activist
Democratic voters, but could she handle herself in a forum devoted to foreign
policy rather than to catfighting with Marjorie Taylor Greene? Is Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez a serious person?
Nope. Not really. Even the New York Times is willing to concede that Ocasio-Cortez
had “some stumbles” — that of course is their way of being polite. To the rest
of us, she looked completely out of her depth. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t quite barf
word-salad all over her blouse the way Kamala Harris assuredly would have in
the same situation, and because of that, I suspect, she is being treated with
kid gloves. But the airheaded vacuousness of her answers will convey the
message all the same to potential voters: She is not ready for prime-time.
She was completely unprepared for the sorts of questions
she would field at a foreign policy summit. When questioned about whether the
United States should send troops to defend Taiwan from an invasion by China, she
literally had no answer: “I think that, uh, this is such a, a — you
know, I think that — this is a, um — this is of course, a, uh, a very
longstanding, um, policy of the United States, and I think what we are hoping
for is we want to make sure we never get to that point?” (Listen to the
clip; aside from everything else, Ocasio-Cortez’s “vocal fry” is going to be a
huge problem for her with voters if she ever runs.)
And even when AOC was in a better mood, and rolling along
with her typical rhetorical style, she continued to steer into amateurish
potholes. It was hard not to cringe with joy when she garbled
her geography like an overconfident high-school student, stating that
merely because Maduro is a bad man “doesn’t mean that we can kidnap a head of
state and engage in acts of war just because the nation is below the equator.”
(Check a globe, Sandy — there’s a reason another country that shares a
continent with Venezuela calls itself Ecuador.)
If Munich was meant as a test run for AOC ’28, then
Ocasio-Cortez can thank her lucky stars that it was just that — a test run, an
audition. With her charisma and power among her base, she will get more. We
will see if she can raise her game, but needless to say, I am doubtful. After
all, she does not strike me as a serious
person.
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