Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has slammed far-right commentator Alex Stein and US Capitol police after being verbally harassed outside a government building.
The Democrat congresswoman was heading up toward the Capitol building on Wednesday (July 13), when Stein approached her and began making sexual remarks.
In a video of the encounter posted by Stein, he calls out: "Here’s AOC, my favorite big booty Latina. I love you AOC, you’re my favorite. She wants to kill babies but she’s still beautiful, you look very beautiful in that dress, you look very sexy."
At one point, the congresswoman approached Stein as if to confront him - but then posed for a 'selfie' with him instead before she carried on walking.
Following the incident, Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to call out Capitol Police for not intervening.
"I posted about a deeply disgusting incident that happened today on the Capitol steps, but took it down because it’s clearly someone seeking extremist fame," she wrote, adding: "It’s just a bummer to work in an institution that openly allowed this, but talking about it only invites more.
In a follow-up tweet, Ocasio-Cortez explained why she had 'posed for a selfie' with Stein, saying that her original intent had been to hit him.
"Here is a video he posted of the incident. I was actually walking over to deck him because if no one will protect us then I’ll do it myself but I needed to catch a vote more than a case today," the lawmaker wrote.
Per The Independent, Ocasio-Cortez discussed her encounter with Stein at even greater length on Instagram, where she wrote: "I think the thing that was so crazy about that incident is not even that it happened but that it happened on the Capitol steps right in front of a Capitol police officer and this dude was engaged (in sexual harassment)."
"This wasn’t about a political opinion or protest or anything like that, he was engaged in very clearly sexually threatening aggressive behaviour right in front of a Capitol police officer, he wasn’t even asked to take a step back," she continued.
She went on to suggest that the officer's indifference to her situation indicated the rumors about Capitol police enabling Jan 6 rioters might be true.
"I really just can't help but think about all of that footage evidence that we saw of all these Capitol police officers helping, I mean sympathetic to the insurrectionists on January," she wrote, adding: "Everyone just decided it was too politically difficult to deal with so they all just brush it under the rug."
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