Former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., recommended Tuesday that a CNN host find a better use of her time.

Simpson, who last week eulogized former President George H.W. Bush, made the suggestion when asked by anchor Alisyn Camerota about his ex-colleague, retiring Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Hatch on Monday earned criticism for saying he didn't "care" that New York federal prosecutors seemed to implicate President Trump last week in two crimes in a sentencing memo for Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer.

“Why don’t you leave people alone and go find some new work?” Simpson said.

Earlier in his response regarding Hatch, Simpson, 87, said he didn't "want to get into that kind of stuff.” But then he preceded to slam lawmakers and pundits for going "back into the life beyond.”

“If you want to pick old scabs, you better pick a new guy to go on the show,” Simpson said.

Simpson had been invited on the cable news network to talk about an open letter he and 43 other former senators signed imploring current members of the upper chamber to "be steadfast and zealous guardians of our democracy," published by the Washington Post late Monday.

"During our service in the Senate, at times we were allies and at other times opponents, but never enemies. We all took an oath swearing allegiance to the Constitution," they wrote. "Whatever united or divided us, we did not veer from our unwavering and shared commitment to placing our country, democracy and national interest above all else."

Hatch's comments stirred controversy Monday because he dismissed Cohen's guilty pleas in New York for campaign finance violations, which aided Trump before the 2016 election, as a Democratic attempt to "do anything to hurt this president."

New York prosecutors outlined in the memo last week how Cohen's steps during the 2016 campaign to silence women alleging they had extramarital affairs with Trump decades ago were taken "in coordination with and at the direction of individual one." "Individual one" is widely believed to be the president, though he has not been indicted.

Correction: A previous version of this article said incorrectly that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, a Trump appointee, prosecuted Cohen. But that U.S. attorney recused himself, and the case was handled by career prosecutors in that office.