MSNBC contributor Hugh Hewitt has apologized for his "bad word choice" after joking that former vice president Joe Biden has "gone through the time machine and transgendered" into Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The conservative host of Salem Radio Network's The Hugh Hewitt Show was discussing the New York Democrat's recent comments in which she warned that the world will end in 12 years because of climate change, describing the issue as "our World War II."
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Giving what appears to be a back handed compliment to Ocasio-Cortez, Hewitt described the 29-year-old as a "wonderful person, sparking with youthful energy, unmoved by her inexperience, confident in her lack of knowledge and completely charismatic."
"I would love to talk to her," Hewitt added in a clipped segment of his show obtained by Media Matters. "Just a long, extended conversation where the word salad doesn't hold up. It wilts in the heat. Not hardball, just keep talking. She's just wonderful. She's my favorite person in America."
Hewitt then suggests that Ocasio-Cortez has now replaced Biden as the most prominent democrat to be relied on for making outlandish remarks.
In 2007, Biden infamously described then presidential candidate Barack Obama as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean." He later apologized for the remarks, claiming they were taken out of context.
"Joe Biden has actually gone through the time machine and transgendered into Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez," Hewitt said. "She's going to fill the Biden gap. The Biden gap concerned me. Someday Joe will leave the public stage and we will not have people who will say outlandish things. But now the Biden gap is filled."
In a tweet, Hewitt apologized for the transgender comments, describing it as a "bad word choice on a sensitive subject."
Prior to the remark, Hewitt played in full the climate change comments made by Ocasio-Cortez at the MLK Now event at Riverside Church in New York.
"Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we're like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it? This is the war—this is our World War II."
"How are we saying 'Let's take it easy' when 3,000 Americans died last year?" she added. "At some point, these chronic realities do reach a breaking point."
Ocasio-Cortez's 12-year time frame is believed to have been cited from a United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released last October.
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Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
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