ABC's Hostin: GOP Objecting to Biden's Neanderthal Comment After Trump Is 'Pearl-Clutching'
ABC legal analyst Sunny Hostin said on Friday’s broadcast of “The View” that Republicans are “pearl-clutching over language” by objecting to President Joe Biden, saying scrapping mask mandates is “neanderthal-thinking.”
In a video, when asked about Texas and Mississippi lifting mask mandates, Biden said, “There’s a mistake. I hope everybody’s realized by now these masks make a difference. We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because of the way in which we’re able to get vaccines in people’s arms. We have been able to move that all the way up to the end of May to have enough for every American, for every adult American to get a shot. The last thing we need is neanderthal-thinking that in the meantime, everything is fine. Take off your mask, forget it.”
Hostin said, “I guess you know, all the pearl-clutching over language is really something to me when you had four years of, you know, of someone speaking in the lowest of terms and be debasing people and degrading people. I think that President Biden has every right to feel this way. He has suffered tremendous loss. Americans have suffered tremendous loss with over 500,000 lost souls. We are close to changing that, but we only have about 15.6%, 16.3% of the total population that has been vaccinated, and we know that we need 70% to 80% of the population for herd immunity.”
She continued, “The ask from the Biden administration was for people to wear a mask for the first 100 days of his administration. There are 60 days to go. It quite frankly is neanderthal thinking to take these restrictions away and take that mask mandate away, not listen to the government and not listen to the science, most importantly. I think he actually put the term kind of nicely. I think I would have called it something worse than neanderthal thinking, quite frankly. Trump — I hate to even say the name, but he cost lives by downplaying the science and by politicizing masks. I guess these Republican governors want to continue that trend. There will be more lives lost because of this lessening of the mask mandate.”
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