During an interview with Alabama Public Television that aired on Friday, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) criticized Democrats for suggesting the events that occurred in Washington, DC on Capitol Hill on January 6 compared to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Tuberville said Democrats do so by calling for a so-called 9/11 commission to investigate the incident.

“First of all, I don’t like 9/11 being used on anything,” he said. “On 9/11, we lost 3,000 people. Three-thousand is horrific. Now, this is a tragedy in itself. But it wasn’t even close to what happened on that day. I think you’re seeing the Democrats just kind of throwing that back and say, ‘Listen, this was a 9/11 comparison.’ This wasn’t even close. I was there. This was my first day on the Senate floor. I had been sitting in my seat for an hour when this happened. We never saw anybody. We heard a little bit of noise. We were evacuated, gone. I think most of it happened on the other end. It should have never happened, and whoever came in there, broke windows, was destructive, got involved with the Capitol Hill police — that’s against the law. They should go to jail. This is not even a comparison to 9/11.”

“Looking into it — they want to look into it, fine,” Tuberville continued. “As long as it is not partisan — bipartisan, look at it the right way. Don’t waste a lot of money on it. I can tell you a lot of what happened. Again, I was there. So can a lot of other people. Let’s get the country going again.”

The freshman Alabama U.S. Senator also criticized the security measures put in place after January 6 and likened them to what one might see in a “third-world country.”

“What I’m concerned about is when I go to work every day, I live about … a mile from the office, I walk, and I have to walk through a barbed wire fence,” he said, “10-foot high fence with razor wire with thousands of National Guard carrying M5s. It looks like a third-world country. We’re not under siege in Washington, DC. There is no problem, but we’re spending $2-3 million per day for some reason to show we’re possibly in trouble. We’re not in trouble in Washington, DC. The trouble we have is this virus we’ve got going on right now.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor