Along with gushing over Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference, the Media Research Center worked to paint the appearance of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the conference as a disaster. Jorge Bonilla huffed in a Feb. 18 post:
On CNN’s “Abby Phillip Gaslighting and Interruption Power Hour”, more commonly known as NewsNight, there was serious firefighting and journalisming underway. The show’s eponymous host covered Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ disastrous gaffe-laden trip to Munich by pretending her most brutal gaffes didn’t happen and deflecting to basic whatabout(Trump)ism.
Watch as Phillip lays the foundation by establishing AOC’s first gaffe, and subsequent pouncing:
[…]Phillip then proceeded to isolate AOC’s Taiwan gaffe against a series of Trump misstatements and make the segment into a comparison of one versus the other. This was, in fact, a cleanup operation, because the segment willfully omitted AOC’s other, more egregious gaffes from over the weekend.
Bashing AOC over her Munich remarks was a right-wing right of passage; as one media outlet noted, “Several Maga commentators claimed her appearance was an embarrassment for America and proof that the Democrats could not be trusted with foreign policy.” It went on to state:
Ocasio-Cortez addressed the furore, telling The New York Times that she was frustrated that her comments had become all about a potential bid in 2028: “This reporter came up to me and was like, ‘Is Munich the new New Hampshire?’ And I cannot say enough how out of touch and missing the point, genuinely, that is.”
Instead, she argued her appearance was about sounding the alarm: “A lot of those folks in nicely pressed suits in that room will not be there much longer if we do not do something about the runaway inequality that is fuelling far-right populist movements.”
The MRC didn’t report any of that, of course. Instead, it pushed the assigned narrative. Clay Waters spent a Feb. 19 post whining that AOC responded to the right-wing attacks:
New York Times reporter Kellen Browning is a superfan of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) – in April 2025 he celebrated the “monster crowds” the younger leftist generated on her “Fighting Oligarchy” with older leftist Sen. Bernie Sanders.
After an embarrassing performance at the Munich Security Conference in which she blanked out, made factual gaffes, and otherwise demonstrated the perils of rarely being challenged by reporters stateside, she called in a Times reporter, who’d been tweeting about her European tour, for a lifeline. He readily obliged with stenography, even admitting it on X:
AOC came to Munich to warn about the far-right. Coverage focused on 2028 & verbal missteps. She gave me a call. “Everyone’s got this story wrong, that this is about me running for president,” she said….
The story’s headline deck made it clear Ocasio-Cortez was in charge of the story’s framing: “After First Big Overseas Trip, Ocasio-Cortez Expresses Frustrations — The congresswoman argued in an interview that presidential speculation, which included scrutiny of her slip-ups, had overshadowed her anti-authoritarian message at the Munich Security Conference.”
The boy knows how to stay on narrative, doesn’t he? Indeed, he closed by quoting “National Review’s inimitable Charles Cooke” further trashing AOC.