Social media users are sharing a screenshot of a fabricated tweet allegedly said by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and that Joe Biden has now been elected president, and that they should start a “purge” of “conservative traitors” who will be worse than holocaust.
“Congratulations to President Joe Biden. Let’s start ‘The Purge’ now to put together all conservative traitors! Democrats, let’s make Auschwitz look like a picnic! Says the tweet in the reports (here, here, here, here). The tweet writer is listed as ‘Alexandria Ocasio …’, it looks like it has a blue tick and uses the same photo as Ocasio-Cortez in her Twitter profile. There is no date on the alleged tweet, which has apparently been retweeted more than 9,000 times. Captions include: “DEMOCRAT PARTY HATE SPREECH”; “Here’s what they want to do to you.” I checked it before it was removed ‘and’ How the hell is that acceptable. What’s wrong with people. ”
“The Purge” is a thriller / horror film and subsequent TV series where all crime, including murder, is legal for 12 hours (www.imdb.com/title/tt2184339/, www.imdb.com/title/tt6110648/ ).
There is no record of this tweet on Ocasio-Cortez’s personal or official Twitter accounts (twitter.com/RepAOC , twitter.com/AOC , here , here).
Reuters could not find the alleged tweet in ProPublica’s “Politwoops” archive, which detects deleted tweets by public officials (here). Deleted tweets from Ocasio-Cortez can be found here.
A Reuters search found no credible news reports reporting that Ocasio-Cortez tweeted this statement.
Ocasio-Cortez’s press team did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet congratulating Joe Biden said, “Congratulations to Elected President Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris!”, And can be seen here .
Reuters earlier broke down another fake tweet attributed to Ocasio-Cortez here.
VERDICT
Alter. There is no evidence that Ocasio-Cortez ever tweeted this.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.