Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just stood in front of cameras and declared — with the confidence of someone who has never once questioned whether she might be wrong about anything — that she speaks for “ALL Americans” when it comes to opposing ICE. All of them. Every single one. Three hundred and thirty million people, and apparently AOC checked with each of us personally before making that announcement.
She did not, in fact, check with any of us. What she did was confuse the sound of her own voice bouncing off the walls of her deep-blue New York district with a national consensus. It’s a condition we’ve come to recognize — AOC Main Character Syndrome — and folks, it is chronic.
Let’s set the scene here, because the timing really is the cherry on top of this whole delusion sundae. AOC made her “I speak for ALL Americans” proclamation about ICE during the exact same stretch of days when courts upheld ICE’s authority to enforce immigration law, Congress funded ICE operations with bipartisan support, and the American public — in every credible poll taken in the last six months — has shown majority support for stronger immigration enforcement. Every single branch of government looked at the question of whether ICE should be doing its job and said, “Yes.”
And AOC looked at all of that and said, “No, I speak for everyone, actually.”
This is the political equivalent of standing in a stadium where 70,000 people are cheering for the home team and screaming, “WE ALL WANT THE VISITORS TO WIN.” Ma’am, look around. Read the room. Check a poll. Do literally anything other than project the views of your district — which went 72 percent for Biden — onto the rest of a country that just elected Donald Trump in a landslide.
But that’s the thing about AOC. She doesn’t represent Americans. She represents a slice of the Bronx and Queens that is so far to the left that her main electoral concern isn’t Republicans — it’s getting outflanked by an even more progressive challenger. Her constituents are not America. Her Twitter followers are not America. The crowd at her latest Instagram Live is not America. America just voted, and America said it wants the border secured, the laws enforced, and the agencies responsible for doing that work fully funded and fully operational.
The courts agree. Just this week, federal courts slapped down yet another attempt to hamstring ICE operations. Gavin Newsom — AOC’s ideological cousin on the West Coast — took a major legal loss when courts told California that no, you can’t just ignore federal immigration enforcement because you feel like it. The judiciary looked at the law, looked at the Constitution, and ruled that ICE gets to do its job. Shocking, I know. It’s almost like we’re a country of laws and not a country of whatever AOC tweeted last.
Congress agrees too. The same Congress that AOC sits in just funded ICE operations. Not defunded. Funded. With real money. With votes from members of her own party. The “Abolish ICE” movement that she helped make famous a few years back? It couldn’t even get a vote on the floor because nobody wanted their name on it. That’s how popular her position is — even Democrats run from it like it’s radioactive.
And yet there she is, standing at a microphone, telling us she speaks for “ALL Americans.”
This is what happens when you spend too much time in an echo chamber. AOC’s entire political reality is constructed from progressive social media, activist rallies, and a district that would elect a potted plant if it ran on the Democratic line. She has never had to persuade a swing voter. She has never had to win over someone who disagrees with her. She has never had to moderate a single position to reflect the actual diversity of opinion in this country. So she genuinely, sincerely believes that her views are everyone’s views — because in her world, they are.
The rest of us live in a different world. A world where illegal border crossings affect real communities. Where fentanyl kills real people. Where criminal aliens who should have been deported commit real crimes against real victims. Where ICE agents are real law enforcement officers doing a dangerous, thankless job that the majority of Americans want them to do. That’s the world AOC claims to speak for — while advocating for policies that would make every one of those problems worse.
Here’s what “ALL Americans” actually think, according to every major poll in the last year: they want the border secured. They support deporting people who are here illegally. They want immigration laws enforced. They want ICE to exist and to function. These aren’t close calls. These aren’t 51-49 squeakers. These are comfortable, clear, consistent majorities.
AOC doesn’t speak for all Americans. AOC doesn’t even speak for most Americans. AOC speaks for AOC, and for a constituency so far removed from the mainstream that they think socialism is a viable platform and ICE is the real threat to public safety.
The rest of us? We’re fine with the agency that catches criminal aliens and enforces the law. We just elected a president who promised to let them do exactly that. The courts just confirmed he can. Congress just paid for it.
But sure, AOC. You speak for ALL of us. Just like you did when your party lost the White House, the Senate, and the House. Clearly the voice of the people.