Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee scorched Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., Thursday for claiming that Vice President Mike Pence is not fit to lead the federal government's coronavirus prevention efforts.

Trump tapped Pence to lead the coronavirus response over Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar Wednesday after Azar had said the same day that he was in charge of the response.

CORONAVIRUS GETS POLITICAL: TRUMP, DEMS EXCHANGE BARBS AS US PREPARES FOR POTENTIAL CRISIS

Ocasio-Cortez took aim at Pence on Twitter for his handling of HIV while he was the governor of Indiana.

An error occurred while retrieving the Tweet. It might have been deleted.

“She ought to look up the word 'literally,' which she uses rather frequently without understanding what it means,” Huckabee told “Outnumbered Overtime.”

“To say that Mike Pence doesn’t believe in science is absurd. But then a lot of the things that she says tend to be absurd.”

Huckabee said that the “health crisis” should not be politicized.

“The tragedy is, I think it is despicable that people are using this whole potential health crisis as an opportunity to get into very narrowly defined partisan politics. There is a genuine concern that we all ought to have, but it ought to transcend whether we’re the left of the right -- this is not a horizontal issue: left, right, liberal, conservative.

"It’s a vertical issue, we’re either doing it right or we’re not doing it right and that’s what we ought to focus on,” Huckabee said.

CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE

Huckabee said that Pence does not have to be a “medical doctor to coordinate” the effort and that his gubernatorial experience in overseeing a “state response” to health issues makes him the “right person” for the job.

“He’s in a position to bring together all of the public health officials and the top minds in the world to help make sure that we get the right response.”

Fox News' Tyler Olson contributed to this report.