Reacting to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) call for a “9/11-style commission” to be convened to investigate the Trump administration’s child separation policy at the border, Fox News host Pete Hegseth said on Monday that there should instead be an investigation to see how the progressive lawmaker was elected to Congress in the first place.
During a town hall in her district on Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez called for a lengthy study into the president’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, adding that it’s what’s “required in order to reunify as many children with their parents as possible”
On Monday’s broadcast of Fox News’ early-afternoon chatfest Outnumbered, the panel discussed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s recent visit to border detention centers, noting Schumer and other Democrats called the conditions at the camps “inhumane.” Fox News host Melissa Francis then contrasted this with President Trump’s weekend tweets about Schumer’s visit in which he said Schumer “must have seen how dangerous & bad” the border crisis is now.
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“What’s ironic now is both sides are saying the exact same thing which is, it’s a mess of the border,” she added.
Hegseth, serving as the female-centric program’s lone male guest host, agreed that the border is a mess and that it’s of Congress’ making before immediately pivoting to AOC. (Fox News has devoted three times more coverage to the freshman congresswoman this year than the other cable news networks.)
“We shouldn’t take anything she says seriously,” Hegseth said of Ocasio-Cortez while labeling her the “de facto” speaker of the House.
“You talk about what’s happening at the border—she compares it to 9/11,” he continued. “She talks about concentration camps where 6 million Jews were killed. And then when she talks about the Green New Deal, she likens it to the challenges of World War II where 70 to 85 million people were killed.”
He then essentially called the Boston University graduate too stupid to be in the House of Representatives.
“You know what we need a 9/11-style commission on?” Hegseth asked his colleagues. “How in the heck does someone like her get elected to Congress?! What’s happening in our public schools or other schools? What is she learning that gives her a platform to feel like these comparisons should be taken seriously at all?”
Later in the segment, after the other hosts debated whether or not a study into the policy was worth Congress’ time, Hegseth, who serves as an informal adviser to Trump, took a final shot at AOC.
“She also doesn’t want a commission, she wants to demagogue,” he exclaimed.
