What is Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick trying to distract us from?

| 10:00 pm EDT August 20, 2021
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Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a far-right Republican, is blaming Black Texans for the out-of-control Covid situation in the Lone Star State. Patrick is no paragon of virtue, but he is a disseminator of misinformation and a fomenter of hate. He infamously said earlier in the pandemic that older citizens should be willing to sacrifice their lives to Covid in order to assist the economy.

In an interview this week with Fox News (an entertainment and disinformation network), Patrick told hatemonger host Laura Ingraham that with Covid “most of the numbers are with the unvaccinated.” That part is true. But what made it so bad was that Patrick went on to attack Black people for the surging Covid cases. “The biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated. Last time I checked, more than 90% of them vote for Democrats in their major cities and major counties,” said the Republican, unable to resist an off-topic jab at Democratic voters. He even nonsensically said that bettering the Covid situation in Texas was “up to the Democrats,” despite the state being combatively and irresponsibly governed by a GOP hostile to Covid mitigation measures.

Not only was Patrick seeking to stir up disdain for Black people, but he also hinted at why the Texas GOP is so hard at work to disenfranchise voters of color – they understandably don’t tend to vote for hate-filled Republicans. If Patrick wants to lay blame for the dire Covid situation, he could simply say a big problem is with unvaccinated people, period, but he just couldn’t help himself but to cater to Ingraham and the other racists amongst the Fox News demographic.