Ocasio-Cortez: DeSantis remarks about Gazans are ‘incredibly destructive and dangerous’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Monday said Florida Gov. Ron. DeSantis’s (R) labeling of “all” Gazans as antisemitic is “incredibly destructive and dangerous.”

“I also want to address something very specific about what Gov. DeSantis said when he said, quote unquote, all Gazans are antisemitic,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview on CNN’s “NewsNight.” “How incredibly destructive and dangerous that rhetoric is.”

“We just had a 6-year-old boy stabbed 26 times this morning because of rhetoric like that,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to a Muslim child who was killed by his landlord on Sunday outside Chicago. The man charged in the death is also charged with hate crimes. 

“And it is dangerous. It is unacceptable. It is reckless, and no leader in the United States of America should be amplifying a message like that,” she continued.

DeSantis, a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, argued against accepting Gazans as refugees to the United States, claiming, “If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic. None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist.”

DeSantis has faced pushback following these comments. 

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) pressed DeSantis on why he did not condemn neo-Nazis in Florida in the same way, saying, “What a racist comment from a racist man,” adding, “The Nazis that have been marching up and down the state harassing the public [and] synagogues wave DeSantis 2024 flags.”

Ocasio-Cortez also told CNN she thinks some regional partners should help Gazan refugees who were forced from their homes since the war began just over a week ago, but the U.S. still may play a role.

“I think there’s something to be said about the region’s partners being able to support and step up Palestinians,” she said. “However, that does not abdicate the United States from our historic role that we’ve played in the world of accepting refugees and allowing people to restart their lives here.”