Jake Tapper Very Through With Idiot Mississippi GOP Gov. Tate Reeves
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Mississippi is a hot mess. (More than usual, that is.)
Mississippi, with its highest poverty rate in the nation, highest infant mortality rate, and its 39th place in education , has added a new "badge of honor": the highest death toll per capita from COVID-19 in the entire United States. With that in mind, CNN host Jake Tapper invited Mississippi GOP Governor Tate Reeves to appear on "State Of The Union" this weekend.
Tapper played a clip of President Joe Biden vaguely alluding to Reeves, who called Biden's vaccine mandates " a tyrannical-type move," and then asked an obvious question. (By the way, here is the full interview, at least until it gets deleted.)
TAPPER: [S]tepping aside from the idea of President Biden imposing this, why are you and the Mississippi legislature willing to impose mandates for other vaccines, but not when it comes to the COVID vaccine that you yourself have gotten?
Reeves poorly tried to explain why mandates are OK for other vaccines but not for COVID, and tried to downshift to what we're guessing is some sort of Fox News or OAN talking point:
REEVES: The president does not have the authority to do this. He knows he doesn't have the authority to do this, in my opinion, but he wants to change the political narrative away from Afghanistan and away from the other issues that are driving his poll numbers into the ground and focus on anything, particularly a political fight, other than those issues.
Tapper countered by pointing out 660,000 Americans have died and that Biden is using the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to keep employees safe. Rather than having an argument for these facts, Reeves responded with a hollow "thoughts and prayers" for those that died while making BS "slippery slope" arguments about vaccine mandates.
Tapper then tried pointing out that if Mississippi were a country, it would be the second worst in the world for per capita COVID deaths. Reeves responded with some weirdo folksy conservative malarkey about how maybe the country would be better off if Congress was part time like Mississippi's legislature. We didn't say it made sense.
"If Mississippi were its own country, you would be second in the world only to Peru in terms of deaths per capita..… https: //t.co/P3f01pzvx4
— State of the Union (@State of the Union) 1632059454.0
TAPPER: [W]ith all due respect, Governor, your way is failing. Are you going to try to change anything to change this horrible statistic from what you're doing already?
REEVES: Yes, well, obviously, the -- in Mississippi, our legislature is a part-time legislature. I -- sometimes, I wonder if in America if our Congress was part-time, we wouldn't be in a better position. But let's talk a little bit about...
TAPPER: Better position than what?
REEVES: ... Mississippi and where we are with the virus.
TAPPER: Your state is second worst -- second worst in the world. I mean, I -- how can you say that?
The reason Reeves could say that is because Republicans don't get what an oxymoron that is. They constantly speak about how "government is bad, so elect me to fix it" then proceed to break it more. it's basically this Eric Andre meme:
After Reeves compared Mississippi to other states having spikes in COVID cases and incorrectly claiming Biden thinks only red states are affected, Tapper point blank asked Reeves for a simple answer to a simple question.
TAPPER: What are you going to do to change this?
REEVESThe best way that Americans -- the best way -- the best thing for Americans to do to protect themselves from the virus -- and, again, we believe in personal responsibility. Individual Americans and individual Mississippians...
TAPPER: So, you're not going to change anything?
REEVES... can take -- make those decisions to take care of themselves.
You could tell at this point that Tapper was getting exasperated. It was not made better when Reeves tried the "look over there!" trick.
REEVES: If you want to talk about cases right now, talk about Kentucky or West Virginia or what's happening in North Carolina, or moving into Southern Virginia. This virus is very transmissible.
TAPPER: I'm asking you about your state. But -- I'm not going to ask you about West Virginia or Kentucky. I'm going to ask you about your state. [...] I'm saying to you, your way's not working. [...] Mississippi now has, if it were its own country, the second worst per capita death rate in the world, behind only Peru. And I'm saying, are you going to try to do anything to change that? And I'm -- I'm not hearing an answer.
REEVES: Well, what I have said to you repeatedly, Jake, is that Mississippi has taken action. [...] In these other states that you refuse to talk about, perhaps because they have Democrat governors, you don't want to talk about them. But the reality is that you and the president and so many other people want to make this about politics...
TAPPER: The governor of West Virginia is a Republican.
REEVES: ...This virus is not just attacking Republicans in red states. This -- this virus is not just attacking Republicans in red states. This virus is attacking Republicans and Democrats in red states and in blue states. [...] And what we ought to be talking about is, what can we do to minimize the deaths going forward? The president's not focused on saving lives. The president's focused on a -- taking unilateral action to show -- to show his power, to show that he's doing something, but that's not going to solve things.
TAPPER: [...] The governor of West Virginia's a Republican. But, Governor Tate Reeves, I'm obviously not going to have a governor come on to talk about other states. I'm going to talk about your state.
It shouldn't be surprising that Republicans never take responsibility . Especially a clown like Tate Reeves . We wish Republicans would elect better people, but they're getting worse, not better.
Have a week!
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Look on the bright side. It's thinning the herd if idiots. That means less votes for idiots representing the herd of idiots. It also raises the average IQ of America.