Did AOC Really Say the U.S. Shouldn’t Have Punished 9/11 Terrorists? Here’s What Actually Happened

In 2019, a claim began circulating online that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had said the United States should not have punished the terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks. The claim was widely shared on social media and conservative websites, but fact-checkers found it to be a significant distortion of her actual statements.

The controversy stemmed from two separate incidents that became conflated online.

In March 2019, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that Congress’s passage of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, was “disastrous” and “wrong.” The AUMF gave the president broad authority to use military force against those connected to the 9/11 attacks and became the legal basis for nearly two decades of military operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Ocasio-Cortez praised Rep. Barbara Lee of California, who cast the sole vote against the AUMF in the House. The final vote had been 420 to 1 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate.

Her comments drew criticism from both Republicans and some fellow Democrats. Rep. Max Rose of New York, a Democrat and Army veteran who earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star in Afghanistan, publicly disagreed with her position. CNN’s Jake Tapper pressed her on what alternatives she would have supported.

Ocasio-Cortez suggested options including “targeting the network itself, limited engagement, and nonintervention,” but critics argued those alternatives were unrealistic given the scale of the 9/11 attacks.

A separate incident in September 2019 further fueled the narrative. Several websites ran headlines claiming Ocasio-Cortez said the public “shouldn’t see photos of 9/11 anymore.” Snopes rated this claim as false. What had actually happened was that Ocasio-Cortez criticized the New York Post for using an image of the burning Twin Towers on its cover alongside a quote from Rep. Ilhan Omar taken out of context, calling the cover “an incitement of violence against progressive women of color.”

The two incidents were combined into the broader claim that Ocasio-Cortez opposed punishing the 9/11 terrorists — a characterization that fact-checkers found misleading.