The Capitol’s leading progressive congresswoman is opting out of Donald Trump’s inauguration, stating, “I Don’t Celebrate Rapists.”
In a series of updates on Instagram, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) mentioned that she had been frequently queried about her attendance at the ceremony scheduled for Monday—which has been relocated indoors from the usual location on the Capitol steps due to Trump seemingly disliking being outside in the cold.
“All these reporters keep asking me, ‘Congresswoman, Congresswoman, are you going to the inauguration?’” she explained to her audience on Sunday. “Let me clarify: I don’t celebrate rapists.”
Her video caption stated, “Guess I’m a bit traditional in that regard.”
Despite a multitude of sexual assault allegations over the years, Trump has not been found guilty of rape. Nevertheless, he has been judged civilly responsible for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll, in a case entangled in disputes over legal terms that led a New York judge to clarify that the victim did not fail to demonstrate that Trump had “raped” her in the general sense of the terminology.
“The determination that Ms. Carroll did not establish that she was ‘raped’ under New York Penal Law does not imply that she did not substantiate that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her in the way many people intuitively perceive the term ‘rape,’ ” Judge Lewis A. Kaplan stated in a document following the trial.
He continued: “In fact, as the evidence presented during the trial make evident, the jury concluded that Mr. Trump indeed committed those actions.”
Earlier in her collection of posts on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez also criticized TikTok, alleging that the social media company was following in the footsteps of other big tech firms by “yielding” to Trump.
Following a temporary service interruption nationwide in anticipation of a pending ban—authorized by the Biden administration due to national security issues concerning TikTok’s affiliation with ByteDance, a firm with strong links to the Chinese government—the application began reinstating service to U.S. users on Sunday, accompanied by a push notification attributing its revival to Trump.
“Welcome back! We appreciate your patience and support,” the notification proclaimed. “Thanks to President Trump’s initiatives, TikTok is operational again in the U.S.!”
Ocasio-Cortez retorted by initially noting that at the moment service resumed, Donald Trump was no longer president and could not have performed any official presidential duties regarding the situation.
She elaborated, “Please recognize that TikTok’s choice to mention Trump in their notification is intentional. They are signaling their intention to collaborate privately, agreeing to coordinate with Donald Trump and his administration. And for all the concerns expressed about TikTok potentially being utilized as a propaganda instrument by the Chinese, realize that they are employing it as a propaganda device for the right.”
The congresswoman further compared this to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent revelation of a significant reduction in content moderation and fact-checking measures for Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Threads, alongside Elon Musk’s purported manipulation of X’s algorithms to promote far-right content in favor of Trump before the recent election.
“I want everyone to connect the dots, because what this effectively suggests is that every prominent social media platform in the United States has fallen under the control of the right-wing,” she remarked. “What does this indicate for us? We are on the brink of an authoritarian regime.”
She concluded, “This is what 21st-century fascism is beginning to resemble.”
