Watch: Veterans Go Public About What Actually Happened at AOC's Community Meeting
Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York hosted a private gathering Wednesday night with Bronx community leaders, where she discussed a variety of issues, according to the New York Post.
The meeting included a discussion of President Donald Trump and his administration’s foreign policy, which reportedly gave Ocasio-Cortez a chance to attack Trump and his agenda.
It was all too much for two veterans in attendance, who reported that they packed up their belongings and walked out on the freshman representative.
“She knocks the country, she knocks the president. And that’s not what America is about,” Vietnam War veteran Silvio Mazzella, treasurer of Community Board 11, told the Post.
Longtime New York City Police Department detective commander and Army veteran Anthony Vitaliano, who said he was sitting between Ocasio-Cortez and one of her staffers, sided with Mazzella.
“I just couldn’t hear her BS anymore,” Vitaliano, who formerly served as CB11’s chairman, told the Post.
“I just got up, got my umbrella in my hand and walked right out,” he added.
“The progressive firebrand slammed the U.S. policy of providing bombs to Saudi Arabia, which has supported Yemen’s government in a brutal civil war, according to attendees,” the Post reported.
“Some blamed her for not including the roles of other nations in explaining the volatile region’s violence.”
Later, Mazzella said on “Fox & Friends” that Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks took him back to the anti-war protests he saw after coming home from the Vietnam War.
“Didn’t feel good. It actually reminded me when I came home from ‘Nam and we had the protesters here,” he said.
“You know, that’s not the way to treat people.”
When asked about the two veterans leaving early, Ocasio-Cortez spokesperson Corbin Trent denied it even happened.
“The only person that left the meeting while it was underway was someone who had to go pick up their children,” Trent told the Post.
“That’s bulls—,” Vitaliano told the Post in response. “Everybody that was there knows I walked out.”
Vitaliano and Mazzella weren’t the only unhappy attendees.
One anonymous attendee told the Post he was “revolted” that Ocasio-Cortez suggested Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are autocrats.
“There was another insult. Israel is one of our strongest allies,” Mazzella said on Fox, according to The Daily Caller. “To do something like that and come out with a statement like that is not, that’s not who we are.”
“It was like Netanyahu and the president are two peas in a pod,” Vitaliano said of Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks.
“They’re the same. They are no good. They are no good for the area. The area. And that’s where we got the second part about the tension in the Middle East what’s going on. Right after this is when I left.”
“She says that the tension is being caused by President Trump because he withdrew from the Iran deal and that is why we are having all this tension. I think she should do her homework that tension has been going on since 1948,” he added.
All in all, the veterans did the right thing in the heat of the moment.
By walking out, they sent a clear message to Ocasio-Cortez and her staff — that anti-American values will not be tolerated by American heroes.
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