The New York Times Tries Impotently to Fix AOC’s Munich Disaster

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Tuesday, February 17, 2026

 

The New York Times’ Kellen Browning would very much like us all to know that the key problem with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s excruciating performance at the Munich Security Conference was that we noticed it. Today, Browning writes that,

 

rather than the substance of her arguments, it was her on-camera stumbles when answering questions about specific world affairs that rocketed around conservative social media and drove plenty of the discussion about her visit, as political observers speculated whether they would make a dent in a potential presidential run in 2028.

 

Ah, yes. The “substance of her arguments.” Substance such as:

 

Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a um — this is, of course, a, um, very long-standing, um, policy of the United States. And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation — and for that question to even arise.

 

And:

 

What we are seeking is a return to a rules-based order that eliminates the hypocrisies around when too often in the West we look the other way for inconvenient populations, to act out these paradoxes.

 

Elsewhere in his piece, Browning notes that Ocasio-Cortez was worried that, having been “microscopically dissected,” her message “was being lost in all the commotion.” But what she said was “her message.” One could dissect her words for the next ten years straight, with the best of intentions, and still one would not glean anything coherent or useful from them. This wasn’t the fault of “conservative social media” or “rocketing” or “speculation”; it was the fault of Ocasio-Cortez herself, who went to a security conference, was asked questions about security, and fell flat on her face at the first hurdle. The “commotion” doesn’t enter into the equation. What AOC said didn’t mean anything because AOC doesn’t know anything. Her ideas weren’t lost in translation. She didn’t “stall,” as Kellen Browning pretends she did. She wasn’t afflicted temporarily by madness or dehydration or anesthesia. She had no clue what she was talking about, so what she was talking about had no content.

 

At best, her answer on Taiwan represented a meandering refusal to respond. She was asked, “Would and should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move?,” and, in return, she said, “I hope it doesn’t happen.” Which . . . yes, we all do. That’s why we ask politicians what they’d do if it does. As for the other line — “a rules-based order that eliminates the hypocrisies around when too often in the West we look the other way for inconvenient populations, to act out these paradoxes” — I would defy even Kamala Harris to top that exercise in flustered filibustering. If, at some point in the future, Mad Libs decides to contrive an International Relations–themed version of its famous game, I guess they’ll know exactly whom to call.

 

Browning suggests that AOC went to Munich to insist that “wealthy world leaders must better provide for their working classes or risk their countries sliding toward authoritarianism.” Apparently, he considers this exonerative. In truth, though, that is the whole problem: AOC is a one-trick pony. What she says in America is what she says in Munich, because she doesn’t know how to say anything else. At some point in her life she became attracted to warmed-over democratic socialism, and since that point she has declined to learn anything more. She’s a meme, an avatar, a vibe. In her interview with Browning, she griped that the press had focused on “any five-to-10-second thing” from her remarks. But of course it did. She is a five-to-10-second thing. She is a limerick competing with a bunch of novels. What did she think was going to happen?

 

Elsewhere, AOC implies that the media’s interest in her potentially “running for president” has made it tough for her agenda to break through. But one must wonder why, if political drama is to blame, this did not apply to Marco Rubio, who is constantly depicted as being involved in a monumental power struggle with JD Vance, and yet managed to deliver a speech at the same conference that was widely regarded as masterly. As it happens, the explanation for this difference is simple: Marco Rubio went to Germany to make a discrete case to the Munich Security Conference, and AOC went to Germany to make yet another Instagram video about nothing. The results matched the aims.