Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele called out Republican governors for standing against renewed coronavirus restrictions and mask mandates amid rising infection numbers.
Steele joined Andrea Mitchell on Friday’s broadcast of “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on MSNBC to discuss the precautions that he believed still needed to be taken in order protect children in schools from the delta variant strain. (RELATED: Even With Breakthrough Cases, The Data Doesn’t Seem To Support Mask Mandates For Vaccinated People)
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Mitchell began the segment with a video of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis questioning the justification for mask mandates in schools.
“Many of these kids, by the way, have recovered from COVID and so there’s no giant scientific justification to put it on at that point. What are the harmful effects of putting a kindergartener in a mask for seven hours and have they talked about the emotional, the academic, the physiological? Why isn’t the CDC studying that?” DeSantis asked.
Steele responded by saying that most people are using freedom as an anchor to justify choosing not to get vaccinated or choosing not to wear masks.
“I’m really biting my tongue here. I’m really biting my tongue, respecting the fact that he’s supposedly the governor of a state,” Steele said, arguing that no one should be taking advice from DeSantis.
“And this idea that people want to be so free that they don’t want to protect themselves is idiotic and to have leaders who perpetuate that nonsense is absolutely irresponsible,” Steele continued.
“They are more than informed at this point, who refuse to do the right thing. The only thing to the good doctors’ point and to Robert Gibbs’ point is that we have to go about protecting ourselves from stupid because I’m not letting stupid kill me and I’m not going to let stupid infect me, so I’m going to take those precautions and I can’t at this point help you if you don’t want to help yourself,” he concluded.