If Secretary of State Marco Rubio set the tone for professionalism, competence, and the advancement of American interests at the Munich Security Conference this past weekend, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presented herself as the polar opposite.

During her first run for Congress in 2018, she confessed, “I’m not the expert in geopolitics.” Well, the conference is often understood as a place for American politicians with presidential aspirations to flex their foreign policy muscles. After AOC’s first foray into a high-profile foreign policy confab overseas, the 36-year-old former bartender might want to see a personal trainer.

Various Democrats expressed disappointment in her performance. Heck, even a New York Times headline admitted that she had “some stumbles.”

“We are all drops that when put together make an ocean, but we don’t see the ocean at the start,” the New York representative posited. If you think that’s a deep thought, she plumbed the depths from there.

The exchange that got the most attention was her answer to a question about whether the U.S. should commit troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. Official U.S. policy is to decline to answer that question — strategic ambiguity to keep the Chinese guessing. AOC didn’t answer it either, but her non-answer was far more painful:

Um, you know, I think that, uh, this is such a, a, you know, I think that this is a um — this is, of course, a, uh, very long-standing, um, policy of the United States, and I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that 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.

If Ocasio-Cortez in any way fancies herself a serious contender to run for president, she needs to think for more than 30 seconds about this question, which is a strategically enormous one for the United States and the world.

Next up was her geographical flub. Opining on whether President Donald Trump should have authorized the mission to extradite Nicolás Maduro, the illegitimate leader of Venezuela, AOC dismissed questions about “who Maduro was as a leader.” In fact, she noted, “He canceled elections. He was an anti-democratic leader.” However, “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.”

Venezuela is entirely north of the equator.

Far more importantly, Maduro wasn’t arrested and brought to the U.S. because of where his nation is or that he was “anti-democratic” but because he committed crimes that are prosecutable here.

AOC rambled on about how “extreme levels of income inequality lead to social instability.” She lectured about how the Trump administration is “looking to withdraw the United States from the entire world so that we can turn into an age of authoritarians that can carve out a world where Donald Trump can command the Western Hemisphere and Latin America as his personal sandbox.” So, Trump wants to withdraw from the entire world so he can rule over half of it?

“I think what we identify is that in a rules-based order, hypocrisy is vulnerability,” she pontificated. “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.”

Say what?

Finally, AOC was thrown from her high horse by the stubborn facts of history.

“Marco Rubio’s speech was a pure appeal to ‘Western culture,’” she said while gesturing with air quotes. “My favorite part,” she added sarcastically, “was when he said that, uh, American cowboys came from Spain. Eh, heh heh. And I, I believe the Mexicans and descendants of, uh, of African slaves, enslaved peoples would like to have a word.”

About what? The fact that the Spanish introduced horses to Mexico and eventually the United States? You’d think someone with the surname Cortez would know that.

AOC mocks Marco Rubio for saying cowboys can be traced back to Spain.

Fun immutable fact: cowboys can be traced back to Spain. pic.twitter.com/WvQXGVI2mr

— Brittany Hughes (@RealBrittHughes) February 16, 2026

In short, AOC ain’t ready for prime time.

As Fox News host Laura Ingraham put it, “The gaffes by AOC are an example of what happens when a politician never faces real scrutiny in the press. He or she gets lazy and sloppy and then chokes on the big stage.”

In other words, AOC can thank her adoring fans in the Leftmedia for the fact that she doesn’t know how to handle a challenge.

It speaks volumes that she ran straight to The New York Times to complain about how her critics are trying to “distract from the substance of what I am saying.”

Yeah, that’s it.

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