Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume doesn’t think much of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, telling Fox viewers Tuesday evening that he found the 29-year-old New York Democrat “adorable” in much the same way he might find a “5-year-old.”
“She makes news. She’s kind of compelling. She’s kind of adorable, as sort of in the way that a 5-year-old child can be adorable,” Hume told Tucker Carlson, with the show host nodding in agreement.
“Yes,” Carlson said. “She says things nobody else will say, but she’s also really arrogant. I wonder if she’ll wear well?”
Hume said he thought the first-term congresswoman’s appeal would last only a few weeks and said he was surprised by her staying power — even as she has become a go-to talking point among Fox News commentators and hosts. He also warned that her proposed policies would lead the broader Democratic Party “off a cliff” if they were ever broadly adopted.
Reps for Ocasio-Cortez did not immediately respond to request for comment from TheWrap.
It is far from the first time Fox News personalities have used Ocasio-Cortez as a political punching bag. The network regularly features her in their primetime and morning opinion programming, often taking issue with her personal choices as well as her signature policy proposal, the Green New Deal.
Also on Tuesday, host Sean Hannity warned viewers that the Green New Deal would lead to “guaranteed vacations” and “universal guaranteed income” and “guaranteed retirement.” In January, a GOP strategist dismissed Ocasio-Cortez as a “little girl” during an appearance on Fox Business. Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan has said she believes much of the criticism of the congresswoman, nicknamed AOC, is due in part to the fact that she is a “young Latina.”
Some anchors and hosts have grudgingly praised AOC’s effectiveness at driving her message, including Laura Ingraham who has called her “impressive”
For her part, Ocasio-Cortez has never had an issue giving it right back, lacing into critics on her Twitter feed, like this Washington Examiner reporter who made fun of her clothes, or this Newsmax host who made fun of her childhood home. In an interview with Spectrum News NY1 this week, Ocasio-Cortez said she was committed to smacking down false attacks before they could become mainstream.
“I grew up seeing these attacks on [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi. I grew up with these attacks on Barrack Obama. I grew up even with these bad-faith attacks on Hillary Clinton,” she said. “And so we know what’s going and I feel like what I’ve chosen to do is break this fourth wall a little bit and respond to them.”
“They were ignored because it was beneath the president to respond to these things,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “Then they started to grow and as we say grow legs and start walking around.”