The NY Times published a new interview with AOC, which was pretty clearly prompted by a piece written by Freddie deBoer for NY Magazine last month. It was titled “AOC is just a regular old Democrat now.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent appearance on the Pod Save America podcast had, for me, the feeling of a final disappointment, the kind that’s a little sad but brings a set of quixotic hopes to a close. AOC appeared on the popular Crooked Media show to announce her endorsement of Joe Biden for president in the 2024 election. To deliver that particular endorsement while appearing on that particular podcast — where former Obama-administration staffers define the limits of acceptable left-of-center opinion — was to send a very deliberate message. It was AOC’s last kiss-off to the radicals who had supported her, voted for her, donated to her campaign, and made her unusually famous in American politics, the beneficiary of a wholly unique cult of personality that is now starting to come undone.

When I wrote about that story I highlighted these images from 2018 when AOC was just an unknown candidate.

Before @AOC hit the national stage & was just a fairly unknown House candidate frm NYC,she took time awy frm her campaign & came dwn to #Tornillo to protest the #tentcity housing migrant children.I made these previously unpublished fotos a yr ago today. #elpaso #aoc #onassignment pic.twitter.com/SWyyI1XVt9

— Ivan Pierre Aguirre : 🥑 (@i_p_a_1) June 25, 2019

As you may recall, she was having this emotional breakdown outside a facility housing migrant children (though all you could see from that fence was a parking lot). She would later drop a rhetorical bomb on this entire debate by referring to such facilities as “concentration camps.”

Ocasio-Cortez falsely claims Trump is operating concentration camps, compares the situation to the Holocaust: “The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are. … ‘Never Again’ means something … we need to do something about it” pic.twitter.com/F2MmZ8y2dT

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) June 18, 2019

That doesn’t leave a lot of room for nuance. Notice her use of the phrase “Never again.” She’s clearly making a reference to genocide and to Nazi concentration camps. She tried to deny this of course but that’s the implication.

Jump forward four years and the NY Times has finally noticed something many of us have been pointing out for years: AOC doesn’t seem to be using that kind of explosive language anymore around the border issue, despite the fact that the crisis is worse than ever. Let the tap dancing begin!

Under Biden, more asylum seekers are being held in private detention centers than under Trump. Families are still being separated. The Biden administration kept Trump-era policies that sped up deportations and made it harder for legitimate claimants to come to the U.S. So, what grade do you give the administration on immigration?

Immigration is arguably this administration’s weakest issue. This is one area where our policy is dictated by politics, arguably more so than almost any other. There are very clear recommendations and suggestions that we have made to the administration to provide relief on this issue, and it’s my belief that some of the hesitation around this has to do with a fear around just being seen as approving or providing permission structures, or really just the Republican narratives that have surrounded immigration.

We also need to examine the root causes of this migration and address that this problem doesn’t start at our border, but it starts with our foreign policy.

I mean, it doesn’t start at our border. And I know that this has been a right-wing talking point, but I do want to understand your thinking here. Why haven’t you used your considerable clout as a Latina leader to visit the border and highlight the ongoing issues there now, like you did during the Trump administration?

Notice that interviewer Lulu Garcia-Navarro is simultaneously apologizing for raising a point previously raised by the right while also dodging the most direct way to ask the question. She could have simply asked ‘Do you still think the US is operating concentration camps on the border?’ That’s the most obvious question here and she avoids it. AOC offers a tame answer:

Well, this is something that we’re actively planning on. What I have done is tours of our New York-area facilities. Right now, this crisis is in our own backyard, and we have toured the Roosevelt Hotel, and I think it’s been very important for us to — especially to my constituents, who are demanding accountability on this — to look at that front line that is right here in New York City.

I want to get to New York, but we’re two and a half years into this administration, the crisis has been burgeoning, and you have been a self-declared and widely viewed leader on this issue.

It’s the right line of question but she’s giving AOC an out by not pressing her more directly. ‘There are famous photos of you nearly in tears at the border from 2018. Do you feel the same now that Biden is in office?’ By not pressing her directly, she lets AOC slide off with more weak sauce answers about future plans and changing priorities.

Yes, yes. Well, I mean, again, I think that this is something that we have been working on. But when this crisis is right here in our own backyard, I have absolutely prioritized having that visitation presence. And I also think that there’s a very, very, very dangerous understanding of the frontline of our migration crisis being just our border. And if we only think of the immigration crisis as a border issue and only understand our border as a southern border and not John F. Kennedy Airport, that constitutes a lack of imagination when it comes to immigration.

But under the Trump administration, you did make the southern border an issue.

Yes. And again, I will be visiting the border.

Sorry, but “I will be visiting the border” is a hell of a long way rhetorically from “The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border.” Finally, she is asked about the situation in New York. The interviewer cites a poll showing a majority of New Yorkers believe the recent influx of migrants is a problem:

The figures from the Siena College Research Institute is the latest troubling sign for Democrats, including President Joe Biden, as the influx of asylum-seekers has rose to about 100,000 in New York City and has touched every part of the state.

“New Yorkers — including huge majorities of Democrats, Republicans, independents, upstaters and downstaters — overwhelmingly say that the recent influx of migrants to New York is a serious problem for the state,” poll spokesperson Steven Greenberg said in a statement.

By a 46 percent to 32 percent margin, voters said that migrants resettling in New York over the last 20 or so years has been a “burden,” not a “benefit” to the state. And by 58 percent to 36 percent, voters said New Yorkers have already done enough and should try to slow the flow of them.

True to form, AOC simply sidesteps all of this:

I think the issue that New Yorkers have is not that there are immigrants coming to New York City, but that immigrants are being prevented from sustaining and supporting themselves.

This is the argument she and Mayor Adams have been making. It certainly would make things easier on NY City but you also have to wonder what kind of magnet it would create at the border when you announce that everyone who claims asylum gets an instant work visa. I don’t think Democrats think about things like that or if they do they don’t seem to care much. But I have to say that having this debate play out in New York with Democrats yelling at one another is infinitely better than having it play out in Texas while Democrats ignore it completely except to criticize Republicans.

Sadly, the comments on this interview are full of gushing praise for AOC and what a brilliant politician she is. She really hasn’t been brilliant on this issue at all but you won’t know that from reading the Times.