Uphill: AOC's January 6 Account

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Haley Byrd Wilt
@byrdinator
If you’ve sort of seen bits and pieces of AOC’s January 6th account going around this week but you’re still not clear on the details or you’re just lost in all of the right-wing pushback to it, do I have the newsletter for you:

Uphill: AOC's January 6 Account
Plus: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is removed from her committees.
uphill.thedispatch.com
6:51 AM · Feb 5, 2021

https://uphill.thedispatch.com/p/uphill-aocs-january-6-account

Clearing up Some Confusion

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told the story of her January 6 experience during an informal Instagram Live appearance earlier this week. The video has been viewed more than five million times as of this morning. Partly because of her narrative style—but primarily due to the embarrassing press handling of what she actually said—there has been a lot of confusion about her remarks. Uphill readers who don’t spend much time online are probably feeling fuzzy about the details. Even if you do spend a lot of time online, it’s possible you’re not exactly sure what to make of everything you’ve seen. I feel like I have a grasp of the situation only because I watched her remarks live.

In the past couple of days, we’ve seen a lot of misinformation going around about this. Alec did a great fact check of some of the claims involved yesterday. But we think it’s also worth taking a deeper look at how journalists approached this situation, and how we got to where we are now.

In her Instagram Live video, Ocasio-Cortez said she was in her office that day when she heard someone pounding on the doors. She thought it was an attacker. She hid behind the door of her bathroom, and she could hear a man yelling, “Where is she? Where is she?” She said she feared for her life in those moments.

Reporters who were watching the feed tweeted about her remarks in real time. From everything she had said up to that point, it sounded like members of the mob had broken into her office while Ocasio-Cortez and one of her staff members were there. I tweeted based on that early impression too. It was the first we had heard of an instance in which a member of Congress had been in such direct danger alone in their office on January 6.

Ocasio-Cortez was still telling the story, though. A couple of minutes later, she revealed the man was a Capitol Police officer who wanted her and the staffer to evacuate the building.

*snip*