Republican Rep. Devin Nunes has an addiction problem: He can’t stop himself from licking the boots of his overlords. However, Nunes doesn’t believe he needs treatment for his bootlicking obsessions in jail—that’s for people with substance abuse problems and the unhoused. Appearing on Fox News with three other dunderheads, Nunes was asked about the COVID-19 response in California, a state that has long dealt with a large unhoused population. The unhoused problem in the United States has been exacerbated over the past decade due to increased housing costs, stagnant wages, budget cuts to assistance programs, and the ever-increasing income inequality gap.
Rep. Nunes—who is a perennial fountain of misinformation about everything in the world, much less public health issues—explained that these homeless people are all kinds of things, but none of those things are “human.”
REP. DEVIN NUNES: The situation out here in California with the homeless population is quite dire. That was before the coronavirus. It's almost like zombie apocalypse. If people have been—you've seen the pictures—I know you guys have showed this on Fox News, about San Francisco and Los Angeles. But you have to understand I've got several thousand just in my district, so the homeless population is spread across California.
Rep. Nunes has got some of them “homeless” you patriots see pictures of on your teeee veeee sets. Why does California, liberal bastion and wealthy enough to pay for all your middle states’ roads, have a homeless problem? Is it because of lacking mental health facilities, terrible drug policies, a deteriorating social safety net, and an economy that only works for a minority of Americans? Nope. According to Nunes, it’s drugs, prisons, and liberals.
REP. NUNES: It's largely due because we let our criminals out. So we passed laws that let multiple convicted drug abusers out. Now, look unfortunately a lot of these people you know I call it zombie apocalypse because a lot of these people have done drugs for a long period of time. They're just not you know, they're not well.
This is the kind of false, sweeping statement we have come to expect from tiny-thinkers like Nunes. Even by the
government’s tally, possibly half the unhoused population in the United States has substance abuse issues and/or mental health issues. It’s also the kind of absence of facts and reality that people like Nunes peddle in. The unhoused population in California has been incredibly high for years, and trying to incarcerate people by making homelessness a crime has, unsurprisingly, never worked.
The next turn by Rep. Nunes is one that Republican operatives everywhere are going to be working on in the coming days and weeks. You see, the GOP’s entire policy platform has always been simple and virtually nonexistent: They just want the government to allow large money interests to control the population of our country and the power that our military and wealth, as a country, has. To this end, their only selling points are fear and blame. Something terrible is happening and it’s someone else’s fault. Unfortunately, the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States is very obviously the fault of shortsighted conservative leadership. So, how do you continue to spread fear, blame others, and at the same time pretend you are being a calming, leader-type person all at the same time? I give you this unscientific bit of leadership:
REP. NUNES: Now one of the advantages is that we have picked up a few folks that have tested positive for COVID. But one of the positive things in all this is that if you're outside in the outdoors, you’re social distancing, we haven't seen it run through homeless population—at least that we know of, yet.
Rep. Nunes is explaining why we don’t need to worry too much about unhoused Americans. In fact, our lack of empathy and our inability to even attempt to deal with the serious issues surrounding unhoused populations across the country is a blessing in disguise as “if you're outside in the outdoors, you’re social distancing.” But you aren’t. Nunes goes on to attack the liberal leaders of California for creating too much bureaucratic red tape, which makes it harder for people like Rep. Devin Nunes, who has finally been able to get his head surgically removed from his ass, to realize we have a major public health and economic crisis on our hands.