Mrs. Pressley repeated Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez, writing on twitter that she didn’t feel safe taking shelter with certain lawmakers.
“The second I realized that our ‘safe room’ of the violent white supremacist crowd included members of Congress who were traitors, white supremacists and anti-maskers who incited the crowd, I left,” said Pressley.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Pressley are members of “The Squad”, a group of four progressive colored women. They were verbally attacked by conservatives and the president for his policies.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, drew criticism from Democrats for tweeting about the location of speaker Nancy Pelosi during the attack, despite reports that lawmakers were instructed by security officials not to reveal their whereabouts. Mrs. Boebert later dismissed the seriousness of her actions.
“They accuse me of tweeting the speaker’s presence live after she was safely removed from the Capitol, as if I were revealing some big secret, when in fact this removal was also being broadcast on TV,” said Boebert in a statement on Monday.
In the week leading up to the Capitol siege, Boebert, a ferocious gun rights activist, released an ad stating that he would carry his Glock with her on the streets of Washington, including on the way to work. On her way to the House of Representatives for the impeachment vote on Wednesday, Ms. Boebert caused a spectacle by making her way through metal detectors, which were installed as part of enhanced security measures after the attack, and bypassing the cops who asked her to stop.
Boebert and other freshman Republicans, like Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, openly questioned or disrespected guidelines designed to protect lawmakers from violence, intruders or the coronavirus.
“I didn’t know if I could make it that day alive,” said Ocasio-Cortez during his live broadcast. “Not only in the general sense, but also in a very, very specific sense.”
Luke Broadwater contributed reports.