WASHINGTON — Far-left New York City Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is being widely mocked for erroneously claiming that Venezuela is “below the equator” while trying to show off her foreign-policy chops in Germany.
Venezuela sits just above the equator, but that didn’t stop the Democratic socialist — who majored in international relations at Boston University — from making the embarrassing gaffe while speaking at a Technical University of Berlin panel Sunday.
“[Nicolas] Maduro canceled elections. He was an anti-democratic leader,” Ocasio-Cortez said, describing the Venezuela elections that took place under the Maduro regime and which many international organizations have said were rigged.
“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,” AOC said, referring to the Trump administration’s capture of the ruthless dictator last month and its attacks on suspected drug boats in the region.
AOC, who reps The Bronx and Queens, trekked to Germany last week to partake in panels at the Munich Security Conference, a move that was widely seen as her trying to build up her foreign-policy portfolio as she mulls a possible 2028 presidential or Senate run.
Part of her foreign-policy message was that the global south is often abused by global powers that are willing to flout the rules-based international system and trample over weaker countries.
Critics, particularly on the right, wasted little time skewering Ocasio-Cortez over her Venezuelan “equator” fumble.
“What’s worse is the woke white liberals in Germany felt compelled to clap for her,” US Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), chided on X. “Wokeness is truly a mind virus.”
Another user swiped, “Pronouncing ‘Venezuela’ and ‘Maduro’ in an accent she definitely doesn’t have is among the many accidentally funny things AOC does while desperately trying to come off as a serious person.”
Conservative pundit Nick Sortor wrote, “AOC has AGAIN made a fool out of herself on stage saying that we can’t capture leaders like Maduro in Venezuela ‘just because the nation is south of the equator’ NONE of Venezuela is south of the equator PLEASE run in 2028, AOC.”
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald also jabbed, “Whoever convinced AOC that she had successfully completed her tutoring and was now ready to give book reports about foreign policy in public really should look for another line of work.
“Unless the goal was to sabotage her. In which case: kudos for a job well done.”
A few of Ocasio-Cortez’s allies leapt to her defense.
“All I see on my timeline is a bunch of Republicans and legacy media reporters parsing every quote and comment from AOC in Germany, trying to mock them for incoherence or inaccuracy,” wrote lefty pundit Mehdi Hasan, CEO of Zeteo News.
“Meanwhile a ranting demented old man who can’t string sentences together, stay awake, or identify Germany on a map sits in the Oval Office.”
Given the 2028 undertones of Ocasio-Cortez’s visit, her stint at the Munich Security Conference was closely watched to see how she fared on foreign-policy issues.
Outside of her commentary on the Israel-Hamas war, Ocasio-Cortez has seldom weighed in on hot-button foreign issues, leading skeptics to accuse her of being untested in that area.
But a series of stumbles besides the equator faux pas, such as her sputtering over a question about what the US should do if China invades Taiwan, and struggling to articulate the biggest change Trump made to American foreign policy, fed fodder to critics.
much of her core message revolved around the idea that countries need to focus on elevating the working class in their domestic politics to “stave off the scourges of authoritarianism.”
Ocasio-Cortez is currently polling in fourth place, with 7.5% support, among speculated 2028 Democratic presidential contenders, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling aggregate.
Other speculated 2028 Democratic hopefuls, such as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who previously attended the World Economic Forum, attended the Munich Security Conference.
