"The Democratic Party is falling apart!" Sean Hannity frantically proclaimed in his opening monologue Wednesday night.
The Fox News host cited the victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Latina and third-generation Bronxite who took down Rep. Joe Crowley, one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress, in New York’s 14th congressional district on Tuesday, to claim that "The era of global free-loading," the president said, "is over."
"Many are hailing Cortez as a rising star on the political landscape, but, in reality, her views, her policy positions, are actually downright scary," Hannity told his viewers.
"Look very carefully. This is the future. This is your modern Democratic Party," he said as a graphic of Cortez's political platform, which included "women's rights," "support seniors" and "higher education for all," among other stances, filled the screen. The segment, which was designed to bash the platform of Ocasio-Cortez, might have actually done the opposite, reminding viewers that her platform might actually be pretty sensible.
Jesse Watters, co-host of the "The Five" on Fox News, attempted to find a silver lining in the young progressive's primary win.
"Keep telling me all those wacky things she believes. This is great for Republicans," Watters said. "An Occupy Wall Street Democrat who wants to abolish ICE, who wants to impeach the president and believes in Medicare for All," he added. "So this is the result, and I think this is good, to have her voice in Congress. I'm really glad that we're hearing her."
"She's obviously a star. She's got a big bright smile, very young, attractive, tall, good-looking woman, a lot of energy. She's going to be on every single cable news show for the next couple of months. and we better get used to say her name," Watters continued.
"I can't pronounce her last name. How is it?" Watters said to his "The Five" co-hosts.
"Ocasio-Cortez," another co-host replied.
"Ocasio-Cortez," he repeated. "We're going to have to give her a little nickname, like O.C. . . . That's a tongue twister."
If Watters is worried about Ocasio-Cortez's rise, he hid it better than his co-hosts, who wasted no time expressing concern and blasting the self-proclaimed democratic-socialist's political platform.
"It's a losing strategy," co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle said, referring to Ocasio-Cortez's political platform.
"This is the Democratic Party. They don't have any messaging," she continued. "Now they have fringe candidates like this coming out. That is not going to win any major elections or anything like that. It's too alienating, it's too far left." (Many Republicans expressed similar concerns about President Donald Trump at first.)
Guilfoyle went on to say that Ocasio-Cortez is "presenting very polarizing choices." She added that now "she has to try to start thinking like a serious candidate and about what she's actually going to put forward."
Greg Gutfeld, another co-host, said the media is going to "overlook the extreme rhetoric that's on her side."
"The media will christen her as a superstar," he said. "She will be on MSNBC more than Russians, and the media desperately wants to crown somebody as a superstar because they are suffering for the dream. They need the new Obama."
During an appearance on Fox News, Ben Shapiro, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire called Ocasio-Cortez's proposals "radical."
"What you see here is the howling at the moon branch of the Democratic party, in which they throw out whatever radical proposal they want and then suggest that this is truly authentic," he said. "The moral clarity lies in making proposals that are completely untenable."
"It is pathetic to say that a near octogenarian is the wave of the future, but I think that Bernie Sanders has a lot more accolades among the under 30 crowd than Hillary Clinton ever did, and this is pretty good proof of that," Shapiro said.
"She's as radical as can be," he concluded.
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