Looking to curry favor with Trump and his cultish followers, Republican governors head to the southern border in latest political stunt
Washington, DC – In the latest Republican attempt to politicize the challenges at our southern border, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is playing host to 10 other Republican governors in Texas to once again spread the racist conspiracy theory that America can’t handle refugees knocking at our door for safety and freedom, and to blame “the non-white other” for the spread of COVID.
The governors scheduled to join Abbott are Doug Ducey of Arizona, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Brad Little of Idaho, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Greg Gianforte of Montana, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, Kristi Noem of South Dakota and Mark Gordon of Wyoming. All of them have embraced Trump’s hard-line against refugees and immigrants, and the highest-profile governors have blamed immigrants for COVID spikes in their states.
The cynicism of this ploy couldn’t be more obvious. They deny and dismiss the ravages of COVID-19. They want to distract from their failure to protect their state’s residents. So they fly to Texas to stage a PR stunt for the Fox News cameras.
Meanwhile, COVID runs wild in their states with transmission rates being some of the highest in the country. They could be visiting families suffering from COVID in overcrowded hospitals in their states, but no. They are flying to Texas to score political points. Dr. Anthony Fauci could not have been clearer in an interview this weekend with CNN that COVID is a domestic problem that requires domestic solutions, not part of the border or the immigration story:
“When you have 700,000 Americans dead and millions and millions and millions of Americans getting infected, you don’t want to look outside to the problem. The problem is within our own country. Certainly immigrants can get infected, but they’re not the driving force of this, let’s face reality here.”
Mario Carrillo, Texas-based Campaign Manager for America’s Voice:
Gov. Abbott and the rest of the governors stuffed in the Republican clown car haven’t taken COVID seriously since the pandemic began. Their goal is not to protect human life but to stir up racial animus.
Evidently, they feel they must distract their own voters and constituents from their collective failure to protect people in order to placate Trump. Instead of promoting measures to help their citizens protect themselves from the pandemic, these governors are scapegoating immigrants and politicizing public health. They are putting the health of their political careers ahead of the health of their citizens.
Republicans are completely uninterested in working on a bipartisan basis to constructively solve the challenges with a broken immigration system. The governors’ press conference today is more proof that for Republicans the border is all about politics, not substance.
