You can chalk up Rep. Nancy Mace as another Republican more interested in attacking Democrats than in preventing the spread of COVID-19, as she pushed the lie that a mask mandate in the House of Representatives is “about politics and control.”
Mace didn’t just object to a new mask mandate in the House of Representatives, she demonized her fellow Americans, deliberately pushed more divisiveness and, even worse, blithely endangered health and lives. And Fox celebrated her for it.
Mace was showcased on the Cavuto Live show yesterday after she tweeted, “Madame Speaker, come and get me.”
Substitute host Charles Payne said she threw “down the gauntlet.”
MACE: The Capitol Hill police were directed by Nancy Pelosi to arrest staffers and visitors on Capitol Hill who were not wearing a mask. This was an insane crazy power grab by Nancy Pelosi. This is about politics and control and not about public health. I can’t think of a worse idea right now than to threaten to arrest American citizens for not wearing a mask, and rather than have these arguments about mask wearing and not mask wearing, we should be pushing vaccinations.
Guess which party in the House of Representatives is mostly unvaccinated and which one is fully vaccinated? Neither Mace nor Payne mentioned that.
“This is the wrong message to send to the American people, that you could be arrested for not wearing a mask,” Mace complained.
Instead of challenging her, Payne helped validate her attack on Pelosi by painting Democrats as hypocrites. “You see so many politicians who don’t wear [masks,]” he said. “You see events where particularly Democrats gather, and none of ‘em are wearing masks. And so, it’s rules for you or rules for thee but not for me. And that complicates the situation. Certainly, it must make you even more frustrated.” He didn’t seem to consider that until less than a week ago, the CDC had said vaccinated people didn’t need to wear masks indoors.
“We’re getting guidance from the CDC, but this data, we don’t have the data or good data or good studies on what’s working and what’s not,” Mace claimed. And since she said she had long COVID, you’d think she’d want to err on the side of safety. Face masks are known to save lives and mask mandates are known to stop the spread of COVID-19. But with apparently unintended irony, she declared, “We have to stop politicizing COVID-19.”
“We have to encourage people to get vaccinated,” Mace continued. She claimed she couldn’t “think of a worse idea to encourage vaccine efficacy by telling people, well they’ve got to wear a mask outside if you’re vaccinated, protect people who are unmasked. That message doesn’t work.” Actually, Fox hosts promoting anti-vaxx propaganda is probably a lot worse, but she didn’t say a peep about that.
Payne smiled and said, “I assume you’re going to continue what you’re doing and, to your point in the video, ‘Come get me,’ you’ve drawn a line in the sand, you’re going to keep it there?”
“Absolutely,” Mace said. “If her line in the sand is that you’re going to be arrested, that is a very dangerous precedent for the United States of America. That is something that communist China does. There has to be a balance of freedom and also protecting the public health.”
To Mace’s credit, she talked about working to overcome vaccine hesitancy in her district. But with less than half her Republican colleagues in the House unvaccinated (which she slyly covered up by saying that 85% of the Hill is vaccinated), masks are probably a good idea in the House in the meanwhile.
You can watch Mace put Republican politics and control over public health below, from the July 31, 2021 Cavuto Live.
