Political narrative overwhelms hearing on Covid-19 as lawmakers from both parties attempt to pinch opponents

A Covid-19 related hearing on the Hill saw a vivid clash between GOP congressman Jim Jordan and Dr. Anthony Fauci over the risk of protests, while other Democrats and Republicans didn’t miss the chance to score political points.

Steve Scalise (R-LA) began his monologue by deconstructing the title of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, which he read as ‘Urgent need for a plan’.
“That’s not the title of a hearing, that’s a political narrative, a false political narrative,” he added, because “if there wasn’t a plan” there would not have been a hearing.

The meeting’s actual title was ‘The Urgent Need for a National Plan to Contain the Coronavirus’, which is not a response to there being literally no contingencies around the pandemic, but to the rising number of US citizens getting sick.
The congressman then proceeded to dramatically shake a thick stack of supposed Covid-19 guidelines, issued by Trump’s administration, saying that if all state governors acted on those “thousands more” would have been alive. While making this point, Scalise ignored the fact that the government is still yet to issue any mandatory rules on the matter, all the while there are more than 150,000 virus-related deaths and the number keeps growing.

Perhaps ironically, during this same hearing where Scalise lamented the politicizing of a health care crisis, his Republican colleague Jim Jordan repeatedly tried to make US chief immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci voice his opinion on whether the government should limit or ban Black Lives Matter protests over coronavirus concerns as it did with businesses and large gatherings.
Fauci was not put in the corner arguing he can’t tell the government what bans
to enforce, and clarifying that he only said that “crowds” are dangerous, but didn’t specify which exactly.

Democrats were also no exception, as congresswoman Maxine Waters blamed the recent Covid-19 death of former presidential candidate Herman Cain on the no-mask Trump rally he attended before testing positive for the virus, making a political statement out of supposed condolences.

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