Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin has concluded that it isn't just the president who needs to go, it's all of his Republican enablers.
Rubin specifically cited Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who possesses a number of "disqualifying characteristics" like being a "congenital lying, racism, constitutional illiteracy, [and] conspiracy-mongering."
"Ernst used to be considered a middle-of-the-road Republican — before she exonerated Trump for plainly impeachable conduct," Rubin wrote. "Now, she sounds just like him. Iowa Starting Line reports that Ernst now seems to embrace 'a thoroughly-discredited QAnon conspiracy theory about U.S. deaths from COVID-19 being a mere fraction of what has been reported.'"
Ernst thinks that doctors are falsifying COVID-19 data.
"They’re thinking there may be 10,000 or less deaths that were actually singularly COVID-19,” Ernst said, without sourcing any possible proof for her conspiracy theory. “I’m just really curious. It would be interesting to know that.”
The QAnon conspiracy theory mischaracterizes the understandings about the virus. It's similar to AIDS where people don't typically die of AIDS, they die from AIDS-related illnesses because the disease takes down your immune system. Since COVID-19 impacts someone's lungs and heart so powerfully, someone can overcome COVID-19, only to need a lung transplant that they can't get in time. So, the death is technically due to organ failure brought on by COVID-19. It's like saying that smoking doesn't kill you, it's the cancer that does.
But then Ernst broke out the a heartless conspiracy about the motivations of doctors, nurses and first responders, many of whom have given their lives to help people make it through this pandemic:
“These health care providers and others are reimbursed at a higher rate if COVID is tied to it, so what do you think they’re doing?” she asked the crowd.
It isn't known if Ernst is simply too ignorant to know better or if she is intentionally misleading Iowa voters to downplay the virus and put their lives in danger. Either way, if people believe what she says, they will get hurt.
"What may have started as a debunked conspiracy theory — that doctors are conniving to over-count patients — is now seriously propounded by a U.S. senator," said Rubin.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, at the National Institute of Health, has said that if anything, it's that COVID-19 deaths are being undercounted.
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) has followed Trump’s lead on the lies about the Black Lives Matter protests responding to the shooting of unarmed Black people at the hands of police.
Higgins posted something on Facebook that was so bad the social media site removed it before he realized it was unacceptable and inappropriate.
It was a photo of armed Black men and protesters saying, “If this shows up, we’ll consider the armed presence a real threat. We being, We the People, of Louisiana. One way ticket fellas. Have your affairs in order.”
Rubin explained that by using the word "this," Higgins is dehumanizing those people as nothing more than objects, not humans or Americans.
"The response? No rebuke. No censure. No expulsion from Congress. Is it any surprise? A party that welcomes two QAnon-embracing congressional nominees has become a cesspool of hate and conspiracies," wrote Rubin.
"Beyond expressions of overt racism and ongoing support for totems of the Confederacy, denial of systemic racism is now the default setting for virtually all Republicans, including the president, attorney general and members of Congress," wrote Rubin, citing statistical data.
It isn't just the judicial system, she explained, there are also "the series of unjustified police killings of African Americans, the disproportionate number of Black people afflicted by COVID-19, and nearly every other social or economic indicator (from life span to wealth) reveal that the tentacles of racism still have a stranglehold on the country."
"All of that is in addition to other atrocities from the GOP," said Rubin. "Republicans routinely amplified Russian propaganda; repeated outright lies (e.g., that President Barack Obama illegally spied on Trump or that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found no evidence of obstruction of justice); went along with Trump for months in his anti-mask sneering; echoed baseless claims of widespread voter fraud; and joined Trump’s hunt for the identity of the whistleblower in the Ukraine scandal (whom they dubbed a traitor)."
It doesn't matter whether they actually believe what they're "regurgitated" from Trump, Rubin said, they're assaulting the truth in a desperate attempt to hold onto what little power they have left.
"House and Senate Republicans are not helpless bystanders in the Trump travesty," Rubin closed. "They protected him from criticism, enabled his antics and amplified his most egregious lies. Once you determine Trump is unfit to serve, it really is not possible to give the rest of the party a clean bill of health."
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