A California minor league baseball team is apologizing after New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was featured in a video of America’s enemies alongside Kim Jong Un and Fidel Castro.
As Yahoo Sports reports, the Fresno Grizzlies, an affiliate of the Washington Nationals, intended to show a video between games of a Memorial Day doubleheader. And indeed, they did show a video. The video started out as a stirring Memorial Day tribute to American values of freedom, respect for fallen soldiers, and the like. The video also included stirring music and scenes of the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, and other iconic American locales, along with the Constitution, Civil War soldiers, and fighter jets taking off from an aircraft carrier.
Narrating the video is Ronald Reagan with his words coming from a speech he gave at some point during his political career.
Reagan’s speech hits all of the right notes for a message played on Memorial Day. Ideals like courage, sacrifice, and duty are mentioned. But things went south, at least for the Grizzlies, when the video began showing images of “enemies of freedom.” One such image was that of Kim Jong Un and another was Fidel Castro. Yet another was freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
You can watch the video embedded below, Ocasio-Cortez appears at 3:06.
Also included amongst the “enemies of freedom” is a man wearing a hat that appears to say “Antifa” as well as protesters bearing an Antifa banner; Antifa is the name of a reportedly violent European anti-fascist group that is believed to have chapters in the U.S. Another image shows an anti-Trump protest, although it’s unclear if that protest was organized by Antifa.
Whether or not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an “enemy of freedom” will be left to the reader. But the Grizzlies management certainly believes that including her in the video was a misstep. In a statement, the team’s management said the video was approved by an employee who apparently didn’t watch it all the way through.
“We’re embarrassed we allowed this video to play without seeing it in its entirety first. We unconditionally apologize to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) in addition to our fans, community and those we hurt. It was a mistake and we will ensure that nothing like it ever happens again.”
The Fresno Grizzlies have apologized to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a scoreboard video shown during Monday night’s doubleheader that appeared to equate her with Kim Jong-un and Fidel Castro. https://t.co/u6RYjvxmyi
— The Sacramento Bee (@sacbee_news) May 28, 2019
As for the video, it comes from a YouTube channel belonging to a user with the handle Emelio E. That channel only has a few dozen subscribers, and no uploads other than the video used by the Grizzlies. As of this writing, it remains unclear who produced it.