Leftist New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez struggled to answer when asked how the United States should respond to China’s threat to take over Taiwan.
Ocasio-Cortez was part of a panel at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, alongside Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer and U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker. The panel focused on discussing U.S. foreign policy, but when the moderator asked Ocasio-Cortez if the United States should “commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan, if China were to move,” the far-Left Democrat struggled to come up with an answer.
“I think that, uh, this is such a — you know, I think that this is a, umm — this is, of course, a uh, a very longstanding, umm, policy of the United States,” she began. “Uh, and I think that what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure we never get to that point, and we want to make sure we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.”
AOC is asked if the US should defend Taiwan in the event China invades. Her answer is a word salad disaster that would even make Kamala cringe: pic.twitter.com/jgfMWiSfmE
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) February 14, 2026
The Daily Wire reached out to Ocasio-Cortez’s office, asking for clarification on her response.
Earlier during the panel discussion, Ocasio-Cortez said the wedge between the United States and China is more about “competition” than “conflict.”
“I think China is, of course, an ascending global power, growing very quickly, acting in its own self interests,” she said. “And oftentimes in Washington, there’s this frame between conflict and competition. I think sometimes depending on what’s happening, that rhetoric can get a little conflict-driven, and I think that it’s really a question of competition.”
In another panel on “the rise of populism” on Friday, Ocasio-Cortez attempted to describe President Trump’s shift to a new strategy on foreign policy and how the rest of the world has responded. Her remark, however, left people wondering what she meant.
“I think what we are seeking is a return to a rules-based order that eliminates the hypocrisies around when too often in the West, we look the other way for inconvenient populations to act out these paradoxes, whether it is kidnapping a foreign head of state, whether it is threatening our allies to colonize Greenland, whether it is looking the other way in a genocide. Hypocrisies are vulnerabilities, and they threaten democracies globally.”
Ocasio-Cortez was mocked over her answers on foreign policy and “the rise of populism,” with some commentators making comparisons to former Vice President Kamala Harris, who regularly made head-scratching remarks on the campaign trail and in interviews.
Both Ocasio-Cortez and Whitmer are viewed as potential Democratic presidential candidates who could compete for the nomination in 2028, but neither the governor nor the congresswoman seemed prepared to answer questions on important foreign policy topics during the Munich Security Conference panel.
In one exchange, Whitmer was asked what she viewed as the solution to the war between Ukraine and Russia, but she tried to redirect the question to Ambassador Whitaker.
“No, please, I’d love to hear your answer,” Whitaker said after Whitmer asked him to take the question.
“The two that I am on the panel with are much more steeped in foreign policy than a governor is,” Whitmer said. “I do think that Ukraine’s independence, keeping their land mass and having the support of all the allies, I think is the goal from my vantage point. Go ahead, ambassador, do a better job.”
