During a town hall meeting in New York, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) warned that the events that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021 were a “trial run.”

“If we lose the House, this is no joke, Jan. 6 was a trial run. Now, a lot of people don’t seem to understand that. It was a trial run,” the New York progressive said this week.

“And they’re going to come back and they win the House – here’s the thing, the technicality of what happened on Jan. 6, the only reason it wasn’t worse was because Democrats had the House and they didn’t have the votes in the House,” she continued referring to Republicans. 

She warned that if Republicans retake the majority in the House in November midterms, “then they have the votes to not authorize and legitimize the presidential election, whatever the results are,” adding it was “very serious.”

A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez told The Hill that the congresswoman’s remarks regarding the “trial run” were meant about overthrowing the election results.

During an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash last year, Ocasio-Cortez expressed her concerns over what she believed could have happened to her during the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, in which a mob of former President Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol and sought to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election.

“I didn’t think that I was just going to be killed,” Ocasio-Cortez told Bash. “I thought other things were going to happen to me as well.”

The New York Democrat, a sexual assault survivor, confirmed that she was worried that she would be raped during the attack.

The November midterms are expected to be challenging for Democrats who are seeking to retain their slim majority in the House and even tighter margin of control in the Senate, given that it is not a presidential election cycle, which sees lower voter turnout. 

A handful of Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the insurrection have opted not to run again, underscoring Trump’s continued influence on the Republican party and how the Capitol riot has driven a wedge between members of the GOP.