AOC went to Europe to audition for the presidency, but even liberal commentators say what happened next could haunt her for three years

The political damage from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance at the Munich Security Conference is turning out to be worse than expected. Even liberal commentators are calling her performance a “major screwup.” Many analysts now believe the New York Democrat’s foreign policy mistakes over that weekend could follow her for the next three years, especially as she is reportedly thinking about a 2028 presidential run.

Ocasio-Cortez attended the conference on Friday, and made several statements that quickly went viral. The reason they spread so fast was that they showed her struggling with basic international issues. For someone who may be eyeing the highest office in the country, that kind of stumble is hard to recover from.

According to Fox News, the most obvious mistake involved a basic geography error. Ocasio-Cortez claimed that Venezuela was “below the equator” while criticizing President Trump’s administration over its handling of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. She was arguing that the U.S. should not engage in acts of war simply because a country is geographically south of the border.

AOC’s Munich appearance showed she is not yet ready for the global stage

“It is not a remark on who Maduro was as a leader,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “He canceled elections. He was an anti-democratic leader. That doesn’t mean that we can kidnap a head of state and engage in acts of war just because the nation is below the equator.”

The problem is that Venezuela is actually located above the equator. Semafor columnist David Weigel noted on X that Ocasio-Cortez had a number of “clangers” during the talks, and expected them to be compiled in “meme video comps” for the next three years. This is not the first time AOC has found herself at the center of a public controversy, she previously made headlines when she spoke on Jake Paul’s Bad Bunny criticism.

Beyond the geography mistake, the most politically damaging moment came when she was asked whether the U.S. should send troops to defend Taiwan if China were to invade. This is a key question for anyone who wants to be commander-in-chief, and her answer was hard to follow. “Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, um, this is, of course, a, um, very long-standing, um, policy of the United States,” she said before attempting to answer.

Commentators also took issue with her overall tone, arguing she appeared out of her depth and was trying to apply her domestic “class-warfare politics onto foreign policy.” She reportedly used what some described as “conspiratorial language” about corporations and oligarchs controlling governments around the world. 

She also claimed the U.S. had enabled genocide in Gaza and accused President Trump of treating Latin America like America’s “sandbox.” AOC has also faced sharp criticism closer to home, including Riley Gaines confronting AOC at a rally, which quickly backfired on Gaines.

Political analyst Mark Halperin called the conference appearance “one of the bigger mistakes” she has ever made, adding that giving her a slot at the conference may go down as a major error if she does plan to run for president in 2028. Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald also questioned the judgment of her team, suggesting that whoever convinced her she was “ready to give book reports about foreign policy in public really should look for another line of work.”