Michigan MAGA lawmaker ignoring COVID crisis in her district to push Trump conspiracies: report

According to a report from the Daily Beast, the Michigan district represented by a newly-elected House Republican is still being ravaged by COVID-19 at one of the highest rates in the country and she is ignoring the damage it is doing while she rails Donald Trump-like about a stolen election and immigrants at the border.

As the Beast's Michael Daly, Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) won election as a Trump Republican and hasn't changed her ways despite his election loss to now-President Joe Biden.

In fact, as Daly points out, she spent the first few months after being elected attacking the election results.

"From the start, McClain's focus has been elsewhere. She was among those who continued to make groundless claims that the election had been stolen long after those claims were debunked by all the courts in the land," he wrote. "Her first big moment in Congress came in the wake of the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. She became one of three representatives from Michigan and 139 altogether who voted against certification."

Now, he notes she has joined the chorus of Republicans attacking Biden over the immigrants at the border while, at the same time, her district is being hammered by a particularly virulent outbreak of COVID-19.

Writing, "The entire mitten-shaped state has been exploding with new cases over the past fortnight, to a daily average of 72 new cases per 100,000—the highest infection rate in the nation. But the rates of hospitalization and deaths, as well as new infections, are all highest in The Thumb—which has considerably fewer medical resources than the urban areas," Daly added, "And yet The Thumb's new Trump-loving representative in Congress, rather than encouraging residents to mask-up in the face of a dire and unprecedented health crisis, is busy tweeting about what she describes as the true threat to Michigan: 'unaccompanied alien children' at the southwest border."

According to the report, when addressing the COVID outbreak in a town hall, she attempted to dismiss it in a Trump-like manner, with a woman who attended the town hall recalling that McClain made a bizarre analogy.

"The young woman, who asked not to be identified, was able to hear McClain make a bizarre comparison between COVID-19 and children who drown. According to her, COVID had killed less than 250 children, whereas 800 drown each year in America," the report states, adding McClain told the crowd, "We don't ban swimming pools."

As Daly wrote, "Not even Trump had compared dead kid stats in an effort to minimize the threat of a virus that has killed more than half a million Americans. McClain could get away with it in a rural realm that at that time had largely escaped the surges experienced by Detroit."

"The five counties generally considered to comprise The Thumb have now all reported more than 100 new cases per 100,000. The highest of those, St. Clair, reported 165, more than twice that of Michigan, more than three times that of New Jersey, and more than four times that of New York," the Beast report noted. "St. Clair also reported a 31 percent positivity rate in testing. Huron County was even higher, with 35.5 percent. Sanilac was 43.1 percent, and Tuscola 31.1 percent. Lapeer was lower, with 24.1 percent, but still markedly higher than Michigan as a whole, which was 16.5 percent."

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