AOC faces hail of criticism over flippant comments on 'woke 1'

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York drew a torrent of criticism on social media over remarks she made during an interview Sunday on ABC News' This Week in which she seemingly laughed off the most extreme woke dogma from the pandemic and George Floyd era.

The congresswoman's interview touched on a range of topics -- everything from her 2028 aspirations to her decision, revealed on social media, to freeze her eggs -- but it was her comments about what she described as "woke 1" that struck a chord with many viewers. 

Her comment came in response to a question she was asked about far-left Democrat candidates' past statements about defunding the police and their attempts to back away from those demands as they face the reality of elections in 2026. "I have a local city councilman that has this saying, 'Woke 1 was crazy,'" AOC said, bursting into a fit of laughter. “During lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today,” she said.

Her comments were, unsurprisingly, heavily criticized by conservatives. Perhaps more surprising, AOC caught heat from people on her own side of the political aisle. 

"I don’t think we get to giggle away “Woke 1 was crazy” as if it was all just harmless rhetoric," Democrat operative Yemisi Egwebole said in a post on X. "Real people’s lives were affected by that era."

Evan Barker, a former Democrat campaign operative and political strategist who wrote a book on how the party has lost its way, echoed that sentiment. 

"AOC’s strategy is to laugh away Woke 1 as 'crazyyyy' and pretend it was some kind of mass hysteria," Barker said on X. "But it ruined careers, pushed an entire cohort of people out of Democratic politics, and is -- according to the Dem staffers messaging me after reading my book -- still happening inside the party now. If Francesca Hong is Woke 1, wait until you see a better organized and serious Woke 2," Barker warned.

Elsewhere in the interview, AOC was asked point-blank whether she would run for president in 2028. "I haven’t ruled out the possibility," she said, adding that running for senate was also a possibility. And she also explained why she posted a video on social media making a personal fertility decision, and showing her beginning the process of freezing her eggs. Below, watch a clip of AOC discussing "woke 1" that has sparked a heavy blowback alongside her stance defunding the police from an interview she gave during the 2020 election cycle.