Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was afraid she was going to be raped during the Capitol riot: 'I didn't think I was just going to be killed'

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told CNN she was afraid she'd be raped during the Capitol siege.
• "I didn't think that I was just going to be killed," she told CNN's Dana Bash.
• The New York lawmaker previously compared people downplaying the riot to abusers of women.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told CNN's Dana Bash that she was afraid she was going to be raped and killed on January 6, when a mob of pro-Trump insurrectionists laid siege to the US Capitol in a failed effort to overturn the 2020 US election results.

"One of the reasons why that impact was so double that day is because of the misogyny and the racism that is so deeply rooted and animated the attack on the Capitol," Ocasio-Cortez told Bash in an interview for CNN's new series "Being," which is set to air in full Monday at 9 p.m. ET.

"White supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways," the New York congresswoman continued. "There's a lot of sexualizing of that violence, and I didn't think that I was just going to be killed. I thought other things were going to happen to me as well."

Bash replied: "So it sounds like what you're telling me right now is that you didn't only think that you were going to die - you thought you were going to be raped."

"Yeah," Ocasio-Cortez said. "Yeah, I thought I was."

While recounting her experience of the Capitol riot, Ocasio-Cortez publicly revealed on Instagram Live in February that she'd previously been sexually assaulted, and she compared Republicans who downplayed the riot and urged the country to move on to abusers.

"They're trying to tell us to move on without any accountability, without any truth-telling, or without confronting the extreme damage, loss of life, trauma," Ocasio-Cortez said then. "The reason I say this, and the reason I'm getting emotional is because they told us to move on, that it's not a big deal, that we should forget what happened, or even telling us to apologize. These are the tactics of abusers."

-Ryan Khosravi ✨ (@ryepastrami) February 2, 2021

The 31-year-old lawmaker, who's become a lightning rod for conservative criticism and a top target for death threats, said in the February Instagram Live that she thought her congressional office was being attacked on January 6. She and a staffer hid inside her office as someone who they thought was a rioter pounded on the door. The person turned out to be a Capitol Police officer, who Ocasio-Cortez said didn't identify himself.

Ocasio-Cortez recounted being terrified that she was going to be murdered as she hid in the bathroom in her office.

"I thought I was going to die," she said. "I have never been quieter in my entire life."