Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) told reporters Thursday that for those who live in the west, the ideas in the Green New Deal “are tantamount to genocide,” according to a Friday Washington Post report.

“That may be an overstatement, but not by a whole lot,” he added.

Even when pushed afterward, Bishop stood by the word choice, which refers to the slaughter of a large group of people, usually of one ethnicity of nationality.

“I’m an ethnic,” Bishop, who is white, said. “I’m a westerner. If you actually implement everything they want to — killing would be positive if you implement everything the Green New Deal actually wants to.”

He blamed the proposed legislation on lawmakers who “judge distance not in miles but in subway stops,” an apparent reference to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). “The genesis of this concept is really coming from easterners who live in an urban setting and have no view of what it’s like in the rest of America.”

He later softened the comments in a statement to the Salt Lake Tribune.

“My comments were obviously not meant literally, and should not detract from the fact that the so-called Green New Deal is born of attitudes that show no respect for the lives and livelihoods of the American people,” he wrote.