During a Monday night appearance on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, Republican Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick used a well-known if antiquated gay euphemism while describing Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, prompting host Laura Ingraham to give him an opportunity to clean up his comments at the end of the interview.
Taking aim at the former Texas congressman right from the start, Patrick called O’Rourke a “moron” for saying undocumented immigrants are currently kept in “modern day bondage” because they are “living in the shadows” and employers use their immigration status as leverage.
Adding that O’Rourke “has no substance,” Patrick railed against the one-time Senate hopeful for supporting reparations for descendants of slaves, wondering if we were “ever going to let that go.”
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“Whatever happened to this guy?!” Ingraham exclaimed. “What happened to this guy? Wasn’t he a little more reasonable not so long ago? Was he always this left wing? He never left the punk-rock weird—”
Patrick’s response to Ingraham’s question was to offer up a dose of homophobia.
“He is so light in the loafers he floats off the ground at times,” said the longtime conservative talk radio host.
After Patrick claimed he doesn’t “like to be critical and call someone names,” Ingraham ended the segment by asking the lieutenant governor what he meant by saying O’Rourke was “light in the loafers.”
“You just meant not consequential, correct? You didn’t mean any pejorative, right?” Ingraham added, helpfully walking Patrick through his clean-up.
“No, no, no! What I mean is he flaps his arms a lot,” Patrick shouted as Ingraham noted “people might think something else.”
“I meant he’s a lightweight,” Patrick said as the Fox News host nodded along.
