GOP Congressman: The CDC Is Waging a 'War on Women Nurses'
On Glenn Beck’s radio show Thursday evening, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) accused the CDC of being “the new commander of the Democrats’ war on women nurses. Because, goodnight, they set them up and then they throw them under the bus.” Goodnight indeed, sir.
Gohmert’s not wholly wrong in his complaints about the CDC; there’s been plenty of poor communication between officials and health workers. But it’s fascinating to hear a man who has consistently voted to deny women access to safe abortions, who voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, who doesn’t support parental leave for government workers–you know, “women’s issues”–to all of a sudden have such deep concern for the women of America.
Gohmert hasn’t backed down on this topic either. On Friday, he reiterated his comments on Fox & Friends, managing to do the unthinkable and weird out the crew there. While on Thursday he’d suggested that he felt physically fine and didn’t think he had Ebola–”But do any of us know for sure?” [Ed. Note: Golly gee, maybe not!]–on Friday he switched his focus to the “war on these poor women nurses” who are just “doing the best they can.”
Gohmert also said that he thought there was “some deal” between the United States and West African nations–”that’s why they won’t do a travel ban”–and compared the CDC’s tactics to the decisions mothers and nurses make when children are sick:
Every caring mother in America knows and has said at one time to their child, “No, you’re not going because you’re sick”… Mothers understand that, nurses understand that.
It’s unclear how that relates to the CDC’s “war.” Even Brian Kilmeade seemed peeved at Gohmert, though for a different reason: at one point, Gohmert gave credit to Fox News staple Geraldo Rivera for knowing more about these issues than he does, before undercutting Geraldo for specifically having “has more expertise with regards to selfie nudies.”
“Don’t take shots at Geraldo, he’s a great friend of ours, he has great expertise,” said Kilmeade. For a brief moment, it was the War on Geraldo that needed intervention, not the Democratic War on Women.