AOC trashes Democrats for closing ranks around Biden, rejecting primary challengers

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats who pushed former President Joe Biden out were the same ones who closed ranks against a primary process when it mattered most.

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., took aim at members of her own party on Thursday in a podcast interview for closing ranks around former President Joe Biden.
"The Majority Report" host Emma Vigeland asked Ocasio-Cortez about how the Democrats lost credibility on the issue of democracy. The host said the Democrats boxed out voters with "the genocide in Gaza" and Biden's run for re-election with no real Democratic primary.
"When Kamala Harris was going around and talking about democracy with a banner behind her, they didn't have the credibility that they needed to fight this fascist threat," the host said.
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"What I find very interesting about that moment and the people who talk about that time is that I think that some, not all, but some of the Democrats that are most aggressive about getting their narrative out about how they wanted to push Biden out were also the same Democrats that were most aggressive about closing the wagons on a primary process when we had a chance to have that in a presidential election," Ocasio-Cortez said.
The lawmaker said Democrats were compensating, and said calling on Biden to drop out became a litmus test within the party.
"I feel like a lot of them are compensating, because, and you hear sometimes, there's these like consultant class and some of these folks that want, you know, who backed Biden when it was time to step down, as like some sort of litmus test," the progressive congresswoman said. "But those folks were part of the establishment that were closing the ranks around Biden when before a primary process would have even started."
Ocasio-Cortez was loyal to Biden staying in the race right up until he dropped out in July 2024, even as Democratic calls intensified for him to give up the nomination after his disastrous debate against Donald Trump.
"If you 10,000% are super convinced that the candidate, or president, cannot beat Donald Trump, then do what you think is in your good conscience. But I have not seen an alternative scenario that, I feel, does not set us up for enormous peril," she said at the time.
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Therapist Jonathan Alter said that Democratic voters may lose faith in their party when the perceive hypocrisy.
"People can forgive mistakes," he told Fox News Digital. "They're far less forgiving when they believe one set of rules applies to political opponents and another applies to those in power. Once that perception takes hold, trust erodes quickly."
AOC argued several Democrats, when asked if the former president should have a primary challenger, rallied their support around Biden.
"They saw at the end how unpopular their actions, you know, the conclusion that their actions had led to and how unpopular it was. So then it became a race to distance themselves from it," Ocasio-Cortez added.
Biden faced mounting calls to exit the 2024 race after the June debate. Former Democratic lawmaker Dean Phillips did launch a primary against the former president in 2024, but he was widely considered a long shot and didn't come close to winning any contests.
Phillips wrote in an op-ed in May 2025 that his bid was met with strong pushback from Democratic leadership.
He claimed that his efforts to primary Biden were met by stiff opposition from Democratic leadership, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries' chief of staff informing him that he "would not be speaking to Biden or anyone else in the White House" after making a courtesy call to inform Jeffries that he planned on running against the sitting president.
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