Padding the list of GOP evil-doing
Pile on.
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President Trump and his Republican toadies inspired a deadly riot last week in the nation’s capital.
Now, Democratic lawmakers are kicking the disgraced Republican Party while it’s down, way down, using the GOP’s great shame as an opportunity to blame right-wing lawmakers for additional ills that have since befallen Congress.
Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, and Brad Schneider of Illinois, for example, claim, without evidence, that unmasked Republican legislators infected them with COVID-19 last week during the siege. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this unverified allegation has gone unchallenged by the press. In fact, journalists have been all-too-happy to repeat the charges verbatim.
Look, you won’t see me shedding any tears for the Republican Party, whatever it is today, but there is no proof that GOP lawmakers did this.
Jayapal went viral this week with a series of tweets explicitly blaming congressional Republicans for her positive diagnosis.
"I just received a positive COVID-19 test result after being locked down in a secured room at the Capitol where several Republicans not only cruelly refused to wear a mask but recklessly mocked colleagues and staff who offered them one," the congresswoman said.
She added, “Only hours after President Trump incited a deadly assault on our Capitol, our country, and our democracy, many Republicans still refused to take the bare minimum COVID-19 precaution and simply wear a damn mask in a crowded room during a pandemic — creating a superspreader event on top of a domestic terrorist attack."
Before Jayapal’s diagnosis, Watson Coleman and Schneider announced they had similarly tested positive for the virus.
Of course, Jayapal and her Democratic colleagues can’t say where they contracted the virus. They can’t say whether any of the unmasked Republicans they huddled with during the riot even have COVID-19. But that isn’t stopping them from blaming GOP lawmakers anyway. That’s politics, baby.
More distressing, however, is that their unverified allegations are being treated as canon by certain newsrooms. Journalists are even publishing running lists of the GOP lawmakers who failed to adhere properly to social distancing guidelines as a frenzied mob tore through the Capitol building, suggesting explicitly that the Republican legislators are responsible for the recent spike in Congress’s COVID-19 cases.
“At Least 9 GOP Lawmakers Refused To Wear Masks During The Capitol Lockdown,” reads the headline to a report published this week by the HuffPost. Its subhead adds, “Three Democratic lawmakers who were in the room with them have now tested positive for COVID-19.”
“Democrats Test Positive for COVID After Republicans 'Cruelly Refused' to Wear Masks While Sheltering,” reads a Mother Jones headline.
BuzzFeed News went with this headline, “Three Democrats Now Have COVID-19 After Republicans Refused To Wear Masks During The Capitol Attack.”
One major problem with this narrative is that none of the maskless GOP lawmakers identified by Democrats or the press say they have the virus (Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida announced in November of last year that he tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies). The House Office of the Attending Physician also has not identified anyone who may have given the virus to Jayapal and her colleagues. There is a chasm between saying merely that everyone should wear their masks and “these Republicans gave me COVID,” the latter of which is simply unproven.
Now, as to the question of whether the three Democratic lawmakers even caught the virus during the Capitol riot, it’s possible, according to the House physician, who sent an email to members of Congress this weekend notifying them that they may have been exposed to COVID-19 during the siege.
“The time in this room was several hours for some and briefer for others," said the email. "During this time, individuals may have been exposed to another occupant with coronavirus infection."
If one really wants to play the role of amateur contact tracer, then let’s not ignore Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, who was on the House floor last week to partake in the speaker’s vote despite testing positive in late December for the virus.
Democratic Reps. Frederica Wilson of Florida and Tim Ryan of Ohio and Republican Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska also participated in the speaker’s vote last week despite having also been exposed to the virus (all three have tested negative).
It’s not a sure thing that Wilson or any of the three lawmakers who were exposed to COVID-19 gave Jayapal and others the virus, but at least with this theory, we have names and at least one confirmed case. That's more than can be said for the narrative pushed this week by Democratic lawmakers and their allies in the press, many of whom appear more intent on hammering the last nail in the GOP's coffin than figuring out who spread COVID-19 through the Capitol.