A protestor who called for Americans to 'eat babies' to fight climate change at AOC's town hall was revealed as a member of a pro-Trump fringe group
- A protester disrupted a Thursday town hall held by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Queens, yelling about how Americans should "eat babies" to reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change.
- Ocasio-Cortez attempted to calm the woman down, saying "we all need to understand that there are a lot of solutions that we have" to slow climate change.
- President Donald Trump retweeted a video of the incident and called Ocasio-Cortez a "Wack Job." The president's eldest son tweeted that the woman "seems like a normal AOC supporter to me."
- But soon after video of the incident began to go viral on Thursday night, a far-right pro-Trump group called the LaRouche movement announced on Twitter that they were behind the protester.
- The group, which promotes a host of conspiracy theories, also linked to a post on their website that called the reduction of carbon emissions a "mass-murder policy."
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
On Thursday night, a protester disrupted a town hall held by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Queens, yelling about how Americans should "eat babies" and "bomb Russia" to reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change.
Ocasio-Cortez, an outspoken progressive freshman, attempted to calm the woman down, saying "we all need to understand that there are a lot of solutions that we have" to slow climate change.
Right-wing media and online provocateurs, including Breitbart, The Daily Wire and activist Candace Owens, quickly jumped on the exchange, accusing Ocasio-Cortez of condoning the woman's calls to "eat babies."
Fox New host Tucker Carlson said it was "pretty revealing" that Ocasio-Cortez didn't reject the woman's comments.
"If someone said to you, 'We need to eat the babies' wouldn't your first response be, 'What? No! Of course not!'" Carlson said on his prime time show on Thursday night. "That's the one thing that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez didn't say, hah, pretty revealing."
President Donald Trump retweeted a video of the incident, calling Ocasio-Cortez a "Wack Job."
But soon after video of the incident began to go viral on Thursday night, a far-right fringe group called the LaRouche movement announced on Twitter that they were behind the protester.
"AOC doesn't rule out eating babies," the LaRouche PAC wrote.
The group, which promotes a host of conspiracy theories, also linked to a post on their website that called the reduction of carbon emissions a "mass-murder policy."
Matthew Sweet, a British journalist who wrote a book that investigated LaRouche, called the group a "bizarre political cult" and pointed out that it has staged several other demonstrations similar to the woman's Wednesday night interruption.
"They've been doing this since the '70s," Sweet told The Washington Post. "The tactic is you go to a political meeting and you create a disturbance that disrupts the meeting, and more importantly, that creates a kind of chaos."
The group, which was founded as a Marxist group by XX Lyndon LaRouche in the 1960s, transformed into a right-wing conspiracy theorist movement in the 1970s. LaRouche spent several years in prison for fraud in the 1990s and died in February at the age of 96.
Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter on Wednesday night to fire back at the president, writing that being a so-called "wack job" is, "Better than being a criminal who betrays our country."
She also said that she refused to condemn the protester's comments because she was concerned for the woman's mental health.
"This person may have been suffering from a mental condition and it's not okay that the right-wing is mocking her and potentially make her condition or crisis worse. Be a decent human being and knock it off," she wrote.
Ocasio-Cortez later tweeted that the revelation that the woman was associated with the right-wing "doesn't rule out potential mental issue."