Former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh is apologizing after he says he was “tricked” into saying 4-year-olds should be armed on Sasha Baron Cohen’s new show, “Who is America?”
Walsh was featured in a satirical program aimed at kindergartners, teaching them how to operate a gun.
“The intensive three-week course introduces specially selected children between the ages of four and 12 to pistols, rifles, semi-automatics and a rudimentary knowledge of murders. In less than a month, a first-grader can become a first-grenader. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good kid with a gun. Happy shooting, kids,” Walsh said in the fake commercial, according to a report by The Daily Mail.
The clip was played on Piers Morgan’s show, Good Morning Britain. What followed was a heated exchange between Morgan and Walsh.
Joe, all I did was play clips of you saying 4-yr-old kids should be armed with guns & grenades. That’s not just ‘silly’ - it’s a disgrace. https://t.co/3UxjQR79ny
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) July 18, 2018
Piers,
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) July 18, 2018
Exactly right. All you did was play the clip of me. You didn't need to have me on your show to do that.
As I said, it must be incredible that you've never ever ever said anything in your entire life that you didn't mean. Wow.
Well, I have. And when I do, I own it. https://t.co/Hn81hWIPPl
Walsh said he was tricked into saying what he did. He said after a long interview about Israel, the interviewer told Walsh to read from a teleprompter. Walsh believed what he was reading was a program that Israel had in which they trained young kids to use firearms, though Israel has no such program. “I didn’t realize I was reading lies about kids & guns until it was too late,” he wrote in a Wednesday tweet.
“I screwed up. If you can’t understand that humans screw up sometimes, so be it,” he said.
Again, I'm just saying that after a 45 min interview on Israel, and 15 min reading about Israel off a TelePrompTer, I didn't realize that I was reading lies about kids & guns until it was too late.
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) July 18, 2018
I screwed up. If you can't understand that humans screw up sometimes, so be it. https://t.co/JhuIf4aT6e