GOP challenger to AOC: NYC officials blaming guns for violent crimes instead of 'woke policies'

Tina Forte, the Republican challenger to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), is running against "woke policies" fueling a rise in violent crime in New York and the incumbent's COVID-19 hypocrisy.

Forte, who was born and raised in Throggs Neck in the Bronx, said that "New York is a mess" and blamed the rise in New York City's violent crime on the new mayor and district attorney.

"They're blaming the guns right away," Forte told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Tuesday. "They're not blaming the woke policies."

"They're not blaming the bail reform, they're not blaming letting the violent criminals back out," she said, emphasizing that government officials just "want to blame the guns." 

"It's the people committing the crimes, okay?" she said. "People are being thrown in front of trains, people being slashed. There's a lot of crime in New York — carjacking, deaths, everything that just keeps rising and rising, and [the mayor] wants to come out, and they want to make speeches about gun control."

Forte, who is a small business owner and sued both former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for their COVID executive orders, explained her experience with having COVID in her state and why she's against vaccine mandates.

"I had COVID back in March of 2020," she recounted. "I am not vaccinated. I have the antibodies … and Gov. Cuomo denied my hydroxychloroquine and my Z-Pak, and I ended up in the hospital for two weeks, almost died, have a lot of damage from it, and it's a conversation between myself and my doctor whether or not a vaccine is right for me."

Forte also discussed AOC's hypocritical attitude towards COVID mandates.

Despite supporting COVID lockdowns and mask mandates, AOC "went into the free state of Florida — not only that, but she was dancing on the steps of the Capitol unmasked, except for the photo op, okay, while the kids in our district are masked," Forte said.

"She doesn't want to work in Congress because of the pandemic," Forte added, explaining that the congresswoman participated in the legislative chamber virtually rather than in-person. "But yet she goes to packed concerts with her friends, unmasked."

Forte said that AOC is "anti-American, anti-police, anti-family" and was responsible for preventing 25,000 Amazon jobs from going to New York.

Her constituents are willing to vote Republican over AOC because of the legal immigrants who see how "an estimated 800,000 non-citizens are going to be eligible to vote — that's 21% of the current registered voter total," the GOP candidate said. "That's very easily enough to swing elections. And it's not fair. And people did come here for a better life."

She knows "store owners that are afraid to open their doors, not only because of the lockdowns that they've created and these mandates, but you could just walk into a store and rob someone at knifepoint and walk out," she said. "So you have these people that came here the right way, and now they see their American dream … falling apart right in front of them. And it has to stop."