Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., rejected the notion that she was gearing up for a presidential run multiple times during an interview with The New York Times published Monday, following a trip to a security conference that she argued was not responsive to a “class-based message.”

“Everyone’s got this story wrong, that this is about me running for president,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Times. “I could give — whatever, about that, to be honest.”

Ocasio-Cortez went to Germany for the Munich Security Conference over the weekend and was mocked for multiple statements she made about Taiwan, as well as for saying Venezuela was below the equator.

The congresswoman called the Munich Security Conference “an elite place of decision makers that, frankly, are not responsive to a class-based message.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman, speaks at TU Berlin on February 15, 2026. (Annette Riedl/picture alliance via Getty Images)

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She rejected the narrative about her gearing up for a 2028 run, and said her opponents were a “network” of leaders. 

“The story is less about the opponents being some hypothetical primary. To me, my opponents are the network that links Orban, Trump, Milei, Bolsonaro, all of these folks,” she said.

Ocasio-Cortez told the Times in a separate remark during the interview that she didn’t go because she’s planning to run for president or because she’s made a decision about a “horse race” or candidacy, “but because we need to sound the alarm bells that a lot of those folks in nicely pressed suits in that room will not be there much longer if we do not do something about the runaway inequality that is fueling far-right populist movements.”

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The “Squad” member rejected the notion again in slamming a reporter who asked her if Munich was the “new New Hampshire,” in reference to the state’s role in presidential politics.

“This reporter came up to me and was like, ‘Is Munich the new New Hampshire?’ And I cannot say enough how out of touch and missing the point, genuinely, that is,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “Global democracies are on fire the world over, and established parties are falling to right-wing populist movements.”

The progressive lawmaker also said that the Democratic Party needed to be able to disagree with one another but remain united.

 Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., takes part in the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (Sven Hoppe/dpa via AP)

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“We need to be able to be very angry at each other, and also know what the real enemy is,” she told the Times. “We have to grow our ranks, and we have to persuade. If we go separately, we will lose it all.”

“I think a lot about all of the heartburn that the Democratic Party has sometimes had in these internal conversations,” she said, noting “the whole thing goes out the window,” if the center and left-wing can’t put their differences aside.

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Ocasio-Cortez claimed that Venezuela was “below the equator” at the conference, while criticizing the Trump administration for arresting the nation’s dictator Nicolás Maduro.

“It is not a remark on who Maduro was as a leader. He canceled elections. He was an anti-democratic leader. 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,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

The lawmaker also accused Israel of genocide at the conference.