Texas Lieutenant Governor Blames Black People For COVID Surge

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick appeared on Fox News this week where he was asked about the rising number of COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in his state. He responded by trying to blame the African American community for the spike in cases, arguing that Democrats need to tell them to get vaccinated. Farron Cousins explains why this excuse doesn't match up to the statistics.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Texas Lieutenant governor Dan Patrick appeared on Fox news earlier this week to explain a way his state's recent surge in COVID cases, hospitalizations and death. And Dan Patrick told Laura Ingram. He knows exactly who is to blame for the spike in COVID cases, black people. That is actually what Dan Patrick blamed the surge in the pandemic on in the state of Texas. Take a look here. He is in his own words, blaming it on the African-American community. Take a look

Or coming after your state, uh, really quickly here and as a response coming after your state, because the increased COVID numbers, hospitalizations deaths are up in Texas, uh, and there's a direct assault on your governor's policies and your state's policies. Very brief response.

Yeah, well, Laura, the, the COVID is spreading particularly, uh, most of the numbers are with the unvaccinated and the Democrats like to blame Republicans on that. Well, the biggest group in most states are African-Americans who have not been vaccinated. The last time I checked over 90% of them vote for Democrats in their major cities and major counties. So it's up to the Democrats to get just as that it's up to Republicans to try to get as many people vaccinated, but we respect the fact that if people don't want the vaccination, we're not going to force it on them. That's their individual. Right.

All right. Real quick, just to address your last point. This is not an individual choice when your individual choice impacts the health and wellbeing and safety of other human beings, it's no longer a personal choice. Okay? We have to get out of that mentality here. This is a public health emergency and every individual that makes the decision to not protect themselves, puts other people in danger. So stop with that personal choice talking point. It's a choice that affects everyone, just like drinking and driving. You don't have a personal choice in that because you put other people in danger. Now, I don't know why Republicans are struggling to wrap their heads around that concept. Furthermore, while it is true, according to the latest numbers I saw, which were from three days ago, um, the African-American community here in the United States only has about a 10% vaccination rate.

And actually one of the best explanations for this I've seen is because obviously the federal government, uh, doesn't have exactly a good history when it comes to medical experiments on African-Americans here in the United States. So yeah, that helps explain a little bit of the skepticism here. So do other demographics, income, brackets, availability, things like that, too. We have to factor that in because we're not taking care of that community. And it is grossly irresponsible for Dan Patrick to come out and say, the Democrats need to tell their people like, whoa, dude, you got to stop acting like everybody in this country is either left or right. And the Democrats are responsible for theirs. You're the Lieutenant governor. You're responsible for every human being in that state of Texas, regardless of color, regardless of religion, regardless of political affiliation, your responsible for every single one, them and furthermore Patrick's comment is a complete lie. And we notice because we can look at the CDC data that the state of Texas has delivered, uh, to the CDC. And it turns out that the black immunity in the state of Texas, do you know how much, uh, COVID they account for in the state 6.1, 1%, 6.1, 1% of the positive COVID cases in the state of Texas are African-American. Do you know who makes up a majority? I know those are good Shaki, right? The majority of COVID cases in the state of Texas, well, over 50%, uh, white people.

So was your talking point, just totally blew it up, but your not going to acknowledge that, even though the data's regularly avail, uh, readily available, excuse me, even though anybody watching that Fox news program could have looked it up the same way I did. They're not going to do it. Laura Ingram is not going to push back on it. And Dan, Patrick's going to get away with this blatant display of racism.