House GOP Conference Chair and Congresswoman Liz Cheney went off on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Tuesday for comparing the detention facilities at the southern border to concentration camps. She also expressed outrage at Democratic leadership for failing to condemn the freshman lawmaker’s remarks.
"It's a total disregard to the facts, in particular about the Holocaust, but also you see the extent to which her colleagues and the people who are supposed to be leading the Democrats in the House - Speaker Pelosi, Steny Hoyer - won't stand up and criticize what she's saying and condemn those comments," she said on Fox News’s “The Story.”
"I'm waiting for her fellow freshmen, I'm waiting for the leaders of her party to stand up and say they disagree because certainly, they ought to disagree. It was a shameful set of remarks."
AOC said during an Instagram Live video on Monday that “the U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are.”
Ocasio-Cortez falsely claims Trump is operating concentration camps, compares the situation to the Holocaust: “The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are. … ‘Never Again’ means something ... we need to do something about it” pic.twitter.com/F2MmZ8y2dT
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) June 18, 2019
Cheney told host Ed Henry that "at some point you just sort of run out of ways to describe how ignorant [the comparison] is."
She continued: "We should never be in a situation where somebody is bringing up the Holocaust in this public discourse, particularly diminishing what happened, particularly demeaning the state of Israel, demeaning the memory of the people who are lost and we really ought to understand and come to an agreement that we aren't going to do that. And any in depth understanding of history and, frankly, it doesn't have to be an in-depth understanding of history, it can be a surface level understanding of history, would demonstrate how wrong her comments were. I’m waiting for her fellow freshmen, I’m waiting for the leaders of her party to stand up and say they disagree because certainly they ought to disagree. It was really a shameful set of remarks"
The congresswoman's comments on Fox News came after a back-and-forth with AOC earlier in the day.
And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
Concentration camps are considered by experts as “the mass detention of civilians without trial.”
And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.
Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history. 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this. https://t.co/NX5KPPb2Hl
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) June 18, 2019
Hey Rep. Cheney, since you’re so eager to “educate me,” I’m curious:
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
What do YOU call building mass camps of people being detained without a trial?
How would you dress up DHS’s mass separation of thousands children at the border from their parents? https://t.co/OOfrrfa1Ew
Happy to help educate you @AOC. You could start with the ?@yadvashem? survivor testimonies. I also recommend Night by Elie Wiesel. Here’s an Amazon link to make it easy for you to purchase. https://t.co/PWHEgciGgG https://t.co/4eMe13FgZp
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) June 18, 2019
Also @Liz_Cheney, the fact that you employed the horrifying word “exterminated” here (co-opting the language of the oppressor) tells us that it’s *you* that needs to brush up on your reading.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
Hope you enjoy defending concentration camps. I won’t back down fighting against them. https://t.co/OOfrrfa1Ew