Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick Blames His State’s COVID Clusterf*ck On ‘African Americans Who Have Not Been Vaccinated’

The state of Texas has an official motto: Friendship. Meanwhile, the Lone Star State’s current leadership may have adopted another unofficial motto, too: Blame it on Black people!

It’s that second guiding principle that the state’s lieutenant governor Dan Patrick seemed to be leaning into when chatting about his state’s rising COVID numbers with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday night. Currently, Texas is just behind Florida in the race to have the most new cases of COVID with a total of 114,913 versus Florida’s 142,671, according to Healthline. But as Raw Story reports, Patrick thinks he has a pretty good idea of what’s causing these numbers to escalate:

“The COVID is spreading, particularly—most of the numbers are with the unvaccinated.”

Sure, that makes sense.

Then came this:

“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, 90 percent of them vote for Democrats, in the major cities and major counties. So it’s up to the Democrats to get, just as it is 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. But in terms of criticizing the Republicans for this? We’re encouraging people who want to take it to take it, but they’re doing nothing for the Africa… African American community, that has a significant high number of unvaccinated people.”

“Them.”

You can watch the clip below.

So when Patrick says that Republicans are working to get as many people vaccinated as possible, is he talking about his boss, governor Greg Abbott—who currently has COVID—outlawing mask mandates? Or walking-talking ad for sterilization Ted Cruz’s vow to create a federal law banning all mask and vaccine mandates?

We’re not exactly sure when the “last time” Patrick checked his stats, but The Washington Post already called bullsh*t:

The latest data from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows that the African American population there is not driving the increase in cases. Black residents in Texas accounted for 16.4 percent of the state’s cases and 10.2 percent of deaths as of Aug. 13. Black people make up about 13 percent of the state’s population, according to census data.

Health data scientist Jorge Caballero was much more forthright in his criticism of Patrick’s claim, telling WaPo: “Making a statement that casts blame on a racial or ethnic minority for the spread of disease is a well-known racist trope that predates most of us. People are already getting hurt by this virus, and it makes absolutely no sense for us to add insult to injury.”

(Via Raw Story)