We read the headline. Then we read it again. Then we checked the date to make sure it wasn’t April Fools’ two weeks late. Two sitting members of the United States Congress — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar — are now publicly buddying up with a Twitch streamer who went on camera and told his audience that America *deserved* the September 11 attacks. Deserved it. As in, 2,977 men, women, and children burned alive, crushed under concrete, or forced to jump 90 stories to the pavement — and his take is that we had it coming.
And the Squad’s response? Brand deal.
Let’s make sure everybody is tracking what actually happened here, because the corporate press has already gone into soft-focus mode. The streamer in question has a long, documented, on-the-record history of saying America got what it deserved on 9/11. It is not a deepfake. It is not out of context. It is not a clip taken from a longer, more nuanced conversation where he was actually quoting Thomas Paine or something. He said it. Multiple times. Loud. Proud. In front of a camera he set up himself.
And two members of Congress — two women who swore an oath to the United States Constitution, two women who get a paycheck signed on the back by American taxpayers, two women who will be eligible for a government pension paid for by the families of the firefighters who ran *up* the stairs of the Twin Towers — decided this was a guy they wanted to do content with. A guy they wanted to platform. A guy they wanted to sit in a chair next to and laugh with and nod along to.
Zero distancing. Zero statement. Zero “I didn’t know.” Because they did know. Everybody knows. It’s not a secret. It’s his whole thing.
Somewhere there is a DNC communications director sitting in a WeWork in Washington, staring at his laptop, refreshing his inbox every thirty seconds waiting for a talking-points memo that is never going to come. Because what do you even write? “When asked about the Congresswomen’s recent collaboration with a known 9/11 apologist, the spokesperson said the Congresswomen believe in the free exchange of ideas.” Sure, Jan.
Remember when Republicans had to apologize for retweeting a meme? Remember when Marjorie Taylor Greene had to spend eight news cycles explaining a Facebook like from 2018? Remember when Tucker Carlson had his face melted off the front page of every legacy outlet in America for interviewing the sitting president of a nuclear power? But AOC and Omar can sit down and shake hands with a guy who publicly defended the murder of three thousand Americans, and the only question CNN wants to ask is what brand of lipstick she was wearing.
That’s the game. That is the entire game. We are supposed to be outraged when a conservative accidentally brushes shoulders with somebody who said something rude on Twitter in 2016. But actual sitting Democrat Congresswomen can go full buddy-cop with a man who said the Pentagon had it coming, and the national media will frame it as “AOC engages with new media voices to reach younger audiences.” That was not a joke. That is the real frame. Check their headlines. Go look right now.
And let’s just be honest about who these two women are, because we’ve been doing the pretend-polite thing about it for seven years and it’s gotten us nowhere. Ilhan Omar is a woman who has, on the record, referred to the 9/11 attacks as “some people did something.” That was her phrase. Some people did something. And now she’s palling around with a streamer whose version of the sentence is a little more direct but functionally identical. There’s a pattern here. We’re allowed to say it out loud.
And AOC? AOC’s entire political brand is performative moral outrage. She cries on camera at a border fence that wasn’t a border fence. She shows up to the Met Gala in a tax-the-rich dress paid for by the rich. She will give a 40-minute Instagram live about how a mispronoun is violence. But a streamer who celebrates the greatest terrorist attack in American history? Silence. Crickets. Nothing. Not a word. And then a photo op.
We keep being told that words are violence. We keep being told that platforming is endorsement. We keep being told that who you stand next to matters. Fine. Great. We agree. Let’s apply the rule. Two members of Congress stood next to a man who said three thousand of our countrymen deserved to die. Apply. The. Rule.
Because here is what the firefighters’ widows know. Here is what the kids who grew up without dads know. Here is what every single American who watched that second plane hit live on television knows. Some things are not a political disagreement. Some things are not a “new media voice.” Some things are not a both-sides debate. Three thousand Americans getting murdered on a Tuesday morning in September is one of those things.
And the fact that two sitting Congresswomen — women who will vote next week on defense spending, on counterterrorism funding, on the budget for the very agencies that hunted down the monsters who did this — cannot be bothered to walk across the room and say “this guy is not okay” tells you everything you need to know about where the modern Democratic Party sits on the question of whether America is worth defending.
They don’t think it is. They never did. And now they’ve stopped even pretending.
So the next time somebody in your family tells you that both parties are the same, pull this story up on your phone. Show them the picture. Read them the quote. And ask them when was the last time a Republican Senator did a podcast with a guy who said the Oklahoma City bombing was justified. We’ll wait.
We already know the answer. So do they.