Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded Tuesday to reports about a video shown at a Fresno Grizzlies game that compared her to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and the late Cuban strongman Fidel Castro.
“What people don’t (maybe do) realize is when orgs air these hateful messages, my life changes bc of the flood of death threats they inspire,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
“I’ve had mornings where I wake up & the 1st thing I do w/ my coffee is review photos of the men (it’s always men) who want to kill me.”— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Ocasio-Cortez retweeted a Twitter post by the Fresno Bee’s Carmen George, who attended Monday’s doubleheader at Chukchansi Park and witnessed the video, which Fresno Grizzlies officials said was lifted from a third-party YouTube account and not properly vetted before it appeared on the scoreboard.
[rlic_related_post_one]
Grizzlies team president Derek Franks said Tuesday the staff member who found and used the video was “remorseful.”
“We didn’t take the full steps to make sure that video was the right content for the ballclub,” Franks said.
The bulk of the video featured patriotic images of the U.S. military. The video’s audio was a Memorial Day speech from the mid-’80s by President Ronald Reagan. The images of the congresswoman, Kim, and Castro, along with pictures of alt-left Antifa protesters, appear near the end of the 3-minute, 35-second video.
What people don’t (maybe do) realize is when orgs air these hateful messages, my life changes bc of the flood of death threats they inspire.
I‘ve had mornings where I wake up & the 1st thing I do w/ my coffee is review photos of the men (it’s always men) who want to kill me. https://t.co/hiYbPghad7
Within hours of the video being displayed, the Grizzlies posted a tweet that described it as “a pre-produced video from outside our front office” that contained “some misleading and offensive editing.”
“We’re embarrassed we allowed this video to play without seeing it in its entirety first,” the post said. Another tweet posted about an hour later apologized to Ocasio-Cortez.
