Chuck Todd Knocks AOC for ‘Tremendous Disservice’ of Concentration Camp Comments; AOC Responds

On Meet the Press Daily, host Chuck Todd singled out Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘s recent comments about “concentration camps” on the US Southern border and castigated “sheepish” Democrats who didn’t call them out as proof that both sides of the political spectrum “cannot talk about right and wrong anymore.”

Playing a video post from Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram feed, Todd took aim at the freshmen Congresswoman for grossly distorting history for her recent use of that loaded term to describe the Trump administration’s immigrant detention camps.

“She just did the people there a tremendous disservice,” Todd intoned, referring to undocumented immigrants being detained in what have been documented as sometimes inhumane conditions at the border. “Be careful comparing them to Nazi concentration camps because they’re not at all comparable in the slightest.”

Ocasio-Cortez did not invoke the Nazi regime in her original comments about the Trump administration detention camps, although she did tweet #NeverAgain, which is commonly understood to specifically reference the Holocaust. She then later tweeted follow-up messages that specifically distinguished between the two as historically distinct and cited analysis that supported her argument.

And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps.

Concentration camps are considered by experts as “the mass detention of civilians without trial.”

And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019

“She tried to make a distinction between concentration camps and Nazi death camps,” Todd merely said. “But Congresswoman, tens of thousands were also brutalized, starved, and ultimately died in those concentration camps.”

From there, Todd pivoted to swiping at Democrats for, essentially, failing to agree with him. Calling it “upsetting,” he said that “some Democrats have been reluctant to condemn her remarks,” as if his position was self-evidently correct. He then cited the Democrats’ lack of outrage as proof that the both sides are unable to honestly criticize their own political allies — a common trope among journalists that tend to wield their supposed objectivity like an intellectual cudgel at partisan politics.

“Why are we so sheepish calling out people we agree with politically these days?” Todd asked. “It’s an even bigger problem on the Republican side of the aisle when it comes to President Trump and the reluctance there. Are we really so ensconced in our political bubbles, liberal versus conservative, that we cannot talk about right versus wrong anymore? Some things are bigger than partisanship.”

Ocasio-Cortez responded to Todd earlier tonight:

Well, @chucktodd – the fact that you slipped in “Nazi” when I never said that is pretty unfortunate.

Almost as unfortunate as the fact that you spent this whole time w/o discussing DHS freezers, “dog pounds,” missing children, & human rights abuses that uphold use of this term. https://t.co/1eNuW1ZR0f

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 19, 2019

My heroes are the ones who stood up when it wasn’t easy.

Kids are dying in cages on our border. Families are being put in “freezers” & “dog pounds.”

Years from now, people will look for the journalists, officials, & everyday people who stood up for what was right in real-time.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 19, 2019

We are calling these camps what they are because they fit squarely in an academic consensus and definition.

History will be kind to those who stood up to this injustice.

So say what you will. Kids are dying and I’m not here to make people feel comfortable about that.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 19, 2019

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.