Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell does not appear to be a fan of the D.C. statehood movement.

Susan Walsh / AP Photo

Fox News’ ever-expanding definition of socialism grew just a little larger last week.

In an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell likened D.C. statehood to “full-bore socialism.”

They plan to make the District of Columbia a state—that’d give them two new Democratic senators—Puerto Rico a state, that would give them two more new Democratic senators. […] So this is full bore socialism on the march in the House. And yeah, as long as I’m the majority leader of the Senate, none of that stuff is going anywhere.

Though it wasn’t entirely clear what McConnell meant, he appears to think that giving the District’s more than 700,000 residents full representation in Congress is an idea straight out of the Communist Manifesto.

Josh Burch, a District native, calls McConnell’s characterization “incoherent at best … He decides to pin that label on anything he doesn’t like.”

As a longtime statehood activist, Burch is currently working on gathering support for the cause in the Senate. He said that McConnell’s opposition to statehood is purely political.

“I think it’s abundantly clear that it’s fear mongering,” Burch said. “It’s trying to play to his base, who will oppose anything with a socialist label, whether or not they know what socialism is.”

McConnell’s comments on one of the nation’s highest-rated TV news programs demonstrate to Burch that Republicans are noticing the statehood movement’s momentum. “I think he’s starting to feel the fact that there is a real national conversation about D.C. statehood happening,” said Burch. “He’s gotta start figuring out what he can do and how he can oppose this.”

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform will hold a hearing on D.C. statehood on July 24 for the first time in more than two decades. H.R. 51, also known as the D.C. Admission Act, has gathered more than 200 sponsors since it was introduced last January by the District’s non-voting House representative, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.

If passed, the bill would turn all eight District wards—minus a few federal buildings and monuments—into the state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth.

While the bill has been bolstered by a Democrat-controlled House, there’s little chance it will receive the support it needs in the Senate. Republicans argue that D.C. statehood would unfairly tip the balance of power by adding two (presumably) Democratic senators. McConnell’s comments make it clear that he has no intention of taking up the measure in the upper chamber. H.R. 51 only has a 2 percent chance of being enacted according to predictions by the artificial intelligence firm Skopos Labs.

While D.C. statehood has gained traction among local legislators who previously opposed the notion, like Maryland Representative Steny Hoyer and Virginia Senator Mark Warner, it has no Republicans signed onto either the House or Senate versions of the bill.

McConnell’s comments on The Ingraham Angle earned him some snarky replies from Twitter users who were quick to point out that granting statehood to U.S. territories wasn’t always a partisan issue.

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder also chimed in with his own rebuke, defending statehood and equal representation as a fundamentally American concept.

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