MTG's Covid misinformation is impossible to defend. McCarthy went for it anyway.
Despite what the GOP leader would have you believe, lying about public health is not a valid opinion.
The tweets that led Twitter to permanently suspend Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account should’ve been easy for prominent Republicans to condemn. Instead, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy defended her by piling misinformation on top of misinformation.
This stuff has consequences, even for politicians who only care about shoring up power. While the unchecked spread of Covid endangers everyone, a recent analysis showed Republican voters are disproportionately dying. But instead of using their power to protect and inform people, Republican politicians are circling the wagons around someone who has done as much as anyone to poison the public discourse around the pandemic, and in the process hardening the views of the 30 percent of GOP voters who say they won’t get vaccinated.
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It’s appalling but not really surprising that nearly two years into this pandemic, and at a time when the omicron variant is driving a record spike in cases, Republicans either refuse or are unable to communicate basic public health guidance to their base.
Kevin McCarthy confuses deadly misinformation for a valid opinion
Greene made a name for herself in 2020 by being the Republican congressional candidate most supportive of the crazed QAnon conspiracy theory and was stripped of her committee assignments shortly after taking office when CNN reported that she had indicated support on Facebook for executing Democratic legislators. She has a long history of pushing anti-vax misinformation, and her Twitter account was temporarily suspended last summer.
But the final straw apparently came on Saturday, when she cited unverified reports of people having medical incidents after receiving a Covid vaccine — incidents that aren’t even necessarily connected to the vaccine at all, such as someone dying from cancer — to demagogue vaccine mandates.
As is the case with any vaccine, some people have had adverse actions to their Covid shots. But for the vast majority, the vaccines are safe and effective, and certainly preferable to a severe case of Covid, which has now killed more than 820,000 Americans. Researchers estimate that Covid vaccines have already saved well over 1 million American lives.
Twitter, no doubt mindful of these facts, permanently suspended Greene’s private account, citing “repeated violations” of the company’s Covid misinformation policy. If Republicans actually had public health in mind, it should’ve been easy for them to condemn her tweets as well. Instead they got busy defending the indefensible.
On Monday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy released a statement reacting to Greene’s suspension by misportraying Covid misinformation as part of the “diversity of opinion” that’s part of “the lifeblood of our democracy.” He went on to threaten that Republicans will strip away Section 230 legal protections that allow social media companies to exist if they come to power following the midterms.
In the second paragraph of his statement, McCarthy alludes to the fact public health experts and Democrats have made statements about Covid that ultimately needed to be revised in light of new information. But this isn’t really surprising or an indictment of those experts, given the novel nature of the virus we’re dealing with and its constant mutations. Greene, by contrast, is lying about something that public health experts already know, which is that vaccines are safe and effective.
To put it bluntly, Republicans are putting an extremely corrosive brand of politics over public health. Perhaps the starkest illustration of this came last week, when the House Judiciary GOP Twitter account posted and deleted a tweet falsely claiming that booster shots don’t work.
On the contrary, recent research out of the UK indicates boosters are at least 80 percent effective in protecting against severe cases. But Republicans aren’t about to let facts get in their way of their conviction that more Covid deaths will ultimately make Biden look bad and help them retake power.
The fringe is the mainstream
Faced with the choice of appeasing the Greenes of his caucus or doing the sensible thing, thing, McCarthy — who hopes to become Speaker of the House if Republicans retake the majority following the midterms — has repeatedly chosen appeasement.
Consider, for instance, how he went from saying “there is no place for QAnon in the Republican Party” during the 2020 campaign to pretending he didn’t know what QAnon was once Greene won office.
McCarthy stood by Greene when she was losing her committee assignments, and he more recently stood by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) when she came under heavy criticism for her outrageously Islamophobic comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). It’s fair to wonder at this point if there’s anything House Republicans could say or do that he would condemn.
Greene, meanwhile, initially responded to her Twitter ban with defiance and by lashing out, but by Monday afternoon had changed her tune to begging on Gettr for her account to be reinstated.
It makes sense that Greene has shifted from the anger to the bargaining phase of grief. After all, her schtick on Twitter was antagonizing the libs, and there are no libs to rile up on Gettr or Telegram.
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Parting shots
Speaking of terrible Covid messaging, the contrast of Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo making a case against Covid testing during a news conference on Monday while standing behind a lectern that said “EARLY TREATMENT SAVES LIVES” has to be seen to be believed.
Meanwhile, within the span of a half-hour on his Monday evening broadcast, Tucker Carlson pivoted from mocking Joe Biden for wearing a mask outdoors to attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for not wearing one outdoors.
And a few hours before Carlson’s show, Fox News hosts attacked schools for transitioning back to remote learning during the omicron wave — while they were doing their show remotely.
But you need self-awareness to feel shame. And as I’ve said before, shamelessness is the MAGA superpower.
I am so thankful everyday that I live in Oakland & the Bay Area in general. People have been wearing masks since they were first recommended, almost everyone is vaxxed & boosted. Maybe less masking than usual as things settled over the summer, but they’re everywhere again now & I’ve never walked inside a store or restaurant and not worn a mask or seen anyone else not wearing one. Everyone is polite and respectful, I’ve never witnessed one instance of anything else. It’s incredibly hard to comprehend why the most simple of things like wearing a mask inside around others & keeping a safe distance seems so difficult for so many people to accept. We don’t give it a 2nd thought, but they can’t think about anything else. Two years in!
On another note, seeing MTG groveling on some random app no one but the far right is even aware of about wanting to get back on Twitter, after of course bashing them, is beautiful. I have to do a double take when I see anyone on the right threaten to get rid of section 230 because they don’t seem to understand that it’s not going to do what they want it to. Getting rid of 230 means they can’t continue to lie with impunity on social media. It’s baffling what they think getting rid of it will do for them.
For our democracy to survive, that has to be one the main things on the chopping block in congress since Zuck has no interest in stopping the propaganda on his own.
I keep saying that the only way this is going to stop is when we stop the lies. Until then, until we are able to protect people from dangerous propaganda, it’s hard to see a way out of this when so many people believe the lies.
“shamelessness is the MAGA superpower.”
Is right.
I never quit wearing a mask, even after vaccination. In fact, with the advent of the Delta variant, I started wearing two masks. I still get laughed at and pointed at in the grocery stores (the only places outside of work that I visit), but I've noticed an increasing number of folks joining me again. Huh... think it has something to do with how many folks are getting sick? *shakes head* Nah, that can't be it! O.o