'Woefully silent' AOC blasted in Times Square billboard warning of 'Trojan horse' China threat
Billboards popped up in Times Square this week promoting a book on the dangers of China's influence and slamming Rep. Ocasio-Cortez for her positions on the CCP.
A new book on China from best-selling author Peter Schweizer is being advertised on a Times Square billboard taking aim at Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for what the book argues is a soft stance on the CCP’s threats.
The Times Square billboard, promoting Schweizer’s book "Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans," shows a photo of Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the progressive "Squad" wing of House Democrats, with the caption "AO-CCP."
"The Chinese military is weaponizing TikTok to target American children," the billboard says. "AOC argued against a TikTok ban…On TikTok!"
"TikTok is something that while we're having this debate in our country about whether it poses a threat, there is no debate in China," Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, told Fox News Digital. "They see it as a Trojan horse."
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"So we wanted to capture the importance of TikTok and also, AOC is from New York and we feel like she has been woefully silent on so many issues, whether it's fentanyl, whether it's TikTok, and she does not see China as a threat. So we thought it was important to highlight that."
Ocasio-Cortez has been criticized by some for opposing a ban on TikTok despite concerns from experts and government officials that the platform, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is being used by the CCP to harvest data for nefarious purposes.
"Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out against banning TikTok, declaring that it ‘doesn’t feel right’ in part because other social media companies collect data, too," Schweizer writes in the book. "She never addressed the fact that because TikTok is controlled by the Chinese state, it represents a very different challenge than that of an American tech company. She also expressed no concerns about the propaganda and social manipulation aspects of the platform. Later it was revealed that the Hispanic Caucus Foundation, where she sits on the Advisory Council, received a $150,000 contribution from ByteDance. And a TikTok lobbyist sat on the organization’s board of directors."
Furthermore, Schweizer argues in his book that China is using TikTok as part of a broader plan to spread division and cause chaos in the United States.
"I've got a section in the book on what they're doing on social media," Schweizer explained.
"They have a very extensive campaign where they’ve got literally thousands of Chinese officers others who create hundreds of thousands of social media accounts where they pose as Americans and they go on our social media and basically half of them will write messages about how America is just a helplessly racist society and the other half of them will be putting up posts about I only like white people and the purpose is to magnify social and racial divisions that exist in the United States and to make it more severe and to make them seem larger than they actually are."
In his book, Schweizer outlines concerns that Ocasio-Cortez and other politicians have not spoken out strongly enough when it comes to fentanyl.
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"Ocasio-Cortez,who serves as the vice ranking member of the powerful House Oversight Committee, has been weirdly silent on fentanyl and China’s role," Schweizer wrote. "Her congressional website yields plenty of mentions of her passionate work on topics like taxes and gun control, but there is not a single mention of fentanyl as of this writing."
Ocasio-Cortez's office did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Schweizer told Fox News Digital that one of the main points in his book is pointing out that China is involved in a war with the United States that is "designed to kill us and undermine us without giving the appearance of a kinetic war."
"In other words, disintegration warfare is trying to fragment and undermine your opponents, to sow division and chaos, distrust and it's kind of a well-established Chinese strategy going back to Sun Tzu centuries ago," Schweizer said. "The Chinese government has never abandoned it, in fact, they've enhanced it."
