Greg Abbott Blasts Joe Biden for “Neanderthal Thinking” Remark, Says Illegal Immigrants are Exposing People in South Texas to COVID
Evan James
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Texas governor Greg Abbott has blasted President Joe Biden for calling his lifting of statewide COVID-19 restrictions “Neanderthal thinking.”
Appearing on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday morning, Governor Abbott said that Biden’s “Neanderthal thinking” remark was “not the type of word that a president should be using.”
Abbott quickly added that Biden couldn’t have used that phrase “on a worse day” because of how he’s handling the illegal immigrants coming into Texas across the US-Mexico border—many of whom ostensibly have COVID and weren’t tested.
“The day he used that word, his administration has been releasing in South Texas immigrants who came across the border that they refused to test that turned out—there were more than 100 of them who had COVID,” Abbott said. “My point is this: the Biden administration has been releasing immigrants in South Texas that have been exposing Texans to COVID. Some of those people have been put on buses, taking that COVID to other states in the United States. The Biden administration must stop importing COVID into our country. That is a Neanderthal type of approach to dealing with the COVID situation.”
Governor Abbott then defended his decision to end Texas’ statewide mask mandate and allow all businesses to operate at 100 percent capacity beginning Wednesday, March 10.
“These changes that we’ve seen in Texas are not really that transformative. Maybe to people in New York it seems like this is a big difference. In Texas we went from 75 percent to 100 percent occupancy. On the mask requirement, before now there actually has not been any enforcement of the mask requirement […] We continue to make wearing a mask a suggestion and we urge all Texans to wear a mask when they’re out.”
Abbott added that Texas’ last spike occurred during Christmas and New Year’s, meaning that the increased transmission occurred because of widespread travel and indoor gatherings where people weren’t wearing masks, not because of restaurants and gyms and other businesses.
On Tuesday Mississippi governor Tate Reeves followed Texas’ lead and lifted their mask mandate and other statewide COVID-19 restrictions as well.
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