AOC spent years telling America to defund the police.
Now she's rebranding – and ABC's Jonathan Karl handed her a mop and helped clean up the mess.
Megyn Kelly watched the whole thing and said exactly what every conservative in America was thinking.
The Interview That Embarrassed a Profession
Karl sat down with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on This Week Sunday and gave her the softest landing in political television history.
When he asked about Francesca Hong – the Wisconsin socialist who called to cancel Thanksgiving, abolish the police, abolish the Senate, and abolish ICE – AOC laughed it off with four words: "Woke 1 was crazy."
Karl chuckled right along with her.
He didn't ask which specific "woke" policies she now considers crazy.
He didn't point out that AOC championed every single one of them.
He didn't mention that Hong's campaign said her values on police abolition "haven't changed" – just the way she talks about it.
He just laughed.
https://twitter.com/MegynKellyShow/status/2087160758165454866?s=20
Megyn Kelly flew to Australia this week and lit Karl up from 10,000 miles away.
"The performance of Jonathan Karl of ABC News across from her when she tried that was abysmal," Kelly said on News24. "He embarrassed himself, he embarrassed the profession of journalism. He was looking at her with his cow eyes like 'Ha ha ha, right, yeah?' It was just embarrassing, and let her get away with murder."
She didn't walk it back.
"I mean, literally get away with murder," Kelly said. "And didn't even seem embarrassed about it, because that's his team."
AOC Built This
Kelly made a point that nobody in mainstream media will touch.
AOC doesn't get to disown "woke."
AOC is the definition of woke.
“She is the reason we have ‘woke,’ and there is no ‘woke 1.o’ or 2.0,” Kelly said.”There is only one woke, and it’s still here and it’s disgusting,” she continued. “It’s like this toxic film that’s all over us, this cancer that’s still in some of our cells that we need a little chemo to excise.”
AOC pushed to defund the police at the height of the movement.
And while AOC laughs about "Woke 1" being crazy, about 2,500 Black Americans have died from inner-city gun violence since 2020 – the direct result of the defund-the-police movement she helped ignite.
"That's squarely on AOC," Kelly said. "I blame her. She's not the only one, but she bears a lot of the blame and was pushing to defund police."
Karl's job was to say that out loud.
He didn't.
Karl Isn't a Journalist – He's a Teammate
This isn't a new pattern for ABC News.
Karl wrote two anti-Trump books during the Trump years and spent years positioning himself as a serious White House correspondent.
He's not serious.
Serious journalists ask follow-up questions.
https://twitter.com/MegynKellyShow/status/2087254092611469510?s=20
Serious journalists don't giggle when a socialist politician waves away her own radical record.
Serious journalists point out that Francesca Hong's own campaign told Fox News Digital her "values haven't changed" on police abolition – she just talks about it differently now.
Karl had that information.
AOC walked out of that interview looking moderate, reasonable, and slightly embarrassed by the extreme wing of her own party.
None of that is true.
She is the extreme wing.
She didn't distance herself from Hong's positions.
She reframed them with a cute catchphrase and Karl handed her the microphone.
That's not journalism.
That's campaign work – and ABC is doing it for free.
Sources:
- "ABC's Jon Karl Sucks Up to 'Kingmaker' AOC, Tries to Soften the DSA's Hard Edges," Media Research Center, August 9, 2026.
- "Wisconsin Dem socialist gubernatorial hopeful dodges whether she still wants to 'abolish police,'" Fox News, July 2026.
- "Francesca Hong reverses her stance on defunding police in podcast," Fox News, August 2026.
- Jonathan Karl, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Dutton, 2021.