Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma announced remotely today that he has tested positive for COVID-19. Explaining that he gets tested frequently because he is an elected official, Gov. Stitt said that while he felt “achey” on Tuesday, in general he has felt fine. Gov. Stitt said he was isolated away from his family and would continue to work in isolation, utilizing video conferencing.
Gov. Stitt then said that he had been in touch about contact tracing, and that he would “not have been contagious before Saturday.” This was contradictory to his statement of a few seconds earlier saying that he only had aches the day before as he made reference to “symptoms” that made him sure he wasn’t contagious starting four days ago. It’s a strange thing to try to parse, but considering the muddied informational Republican Party line these days, it is probably hard not to lie and misinform when that’s mostly all you ever do.
Gov. Stitt has pushed back at critics who have called for him to roll back some of the state’s aggressive reopening plans even though Oklahoma has seen huge increases in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks. News 9 in Oklahoma reported that even though the governor wore a mask at the end of June during a press conference, he was seen without one at an indoor event in the middle of June. Maybe Gov. Stitt’s move towards masks and his ultimate contraction of the virus was due to his fearless leader? On June 20, our human virus-in-chief Donald Trump might have brought a boatload of COVID-19 to Oklahoma.
Maybe you remember Gov. Stitt for his infamous family photo where he mocked calls for social distancing earlier in our burgeoning COVID-19 crisis.
Gov. Stitt is also known for crying and whining about his Second Amendment rights and the need to carry a firearm to protect his family. The first bill Stitt signed in office was one allowing Oklahomans to carry guns without permits, saying: “I think the best defense for a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
