Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on The Late Show on Wednesday to share her thoughts on the first round of Democratic debates, receiving a standing ovation and chants of support from host Stephen Colbert's crowd.
The New York representative refrained from endorsing any of the candidates, but did praise the performance of certain Democrats that took to the stage.
Once the raucous audience welcome for Ocasio-Cortez—which included loud chants of "AOC"—had died down, the congresswoman and Colbert got into the reaction to the first installment of the Democratic debates, the second of which will be held tonight.
Colbert first asked Ocasio-Cortez how she felt about the significant amount of Spanish spoken on stage during the debate. The congresswoman, who is of Puerto Rican descent, replied: "I loved it, because, I represent the Bronx and there was a lot of Spanglish in the building," The Daily Beast reported.
She did suggest it was "humorous, sometimes, at times" because she thought some candidates might start replying to questions by saying, "I will not give you an answer to your question" in Spanish. "But it was good," she added. "I thought it was a good gesture to the fact that we are a diverse country."
As for who performed the best on the night, Ocasio-Cortez had kind words for several candidates. She said Elizabeth Warren "knocked it out of the park," while Julian Castro did a "fantastic job." Both Warren and Castro distinguished themselves, Ocasio-Cortez added, while Corey Booker "did a great job in talking about criminal justice."
"I'll be honest, I really do think that this was a breakaway night," she told Colbert.
But Ocasio-Cortez—who is spearheading the Green New Deal—also warned that the candidates were not focused enough on environmental issues, The Hill noted. "I don't think we're discussing climate change the way we need to be discussing climate change," she said. "You can't just say, 'Is Miami going to exist in 50 years?' we need to say, 'What are you going to do about this?'"
Ahead of Thursday's second round of the debates, she also warned that former Vice President Joe Biden—the current front runner—may not prove to be the best choice for the Democratic Party.
"I think it's dangerous to assume that any candidate is a quote-unquote 'safe choice,'" she told Colbert. "That you pick one candidate and that's just going to deliver an election for you. But with respect to Vice President Biden, it's more about an overall electoral strategy.
"I think there's this idea that we have to sacrifice everything," she explained. "That we can't talk about working class issues, that we can't talk about criminal justice issues, that we can't talk about immigration because it isolates this very small sliver of Obama-to-Trump voters.
"And I think that that's a mistake. Because if we sacrifice the issues of so many communities, I think we depress turnout. And what we need is more people to turn out next year than have ever turned out in American history."
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