Beware of making jokes about COVID-19.
Tom Malinowski apparently forgot “Congress in Your Kitchen” with voters this Thursday afternoon during an online meeting with voters.
In answering questions about further action the House can take on the pandemic, Malinowski, a newbie Democrat on CD-7, said Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader from Kentucky, remains an obstacle.
The audience got the point; additional pandemic-related legislation can only be made if the GOP Senate agrees with the Democratic House.
Nobody can deny that.
But then Malinowski threw in a joke.
He pointed out that Lysol, a popular disinfectant nowadays, is made in his district. That would be a Somerset County facility operated by parent company Reckitt & Benckiser. Armed with that information, the congressman said to a caller, “I’ve been thinking about using that with Mitch McConnell, like, hey, you know we’re going to hold the Lysol to Kentucky until you pass our electoral security bill.”
Ouch.
Now the congressman giggled when he said it. And he was quick to call it a “fantasy” and remarked, “It won’t work that way.”
Nothing a congressman says is a secret, and Malinowski’s joke quickly made it to GOP circles in Washington and Kentucky. The National Republican Congressional Committee weighed on Thursday night.
“People are dying, but that doesn’t stop Tom Malinowski from making sick jokes about withholding coronavirus-killing products for political reasons,” said spokesman Michael McAdams, adding that the
Comments are “absolutely disgusting”.
He said more than 1,500 Kentucky residents got the virus and 75 have died.
Malinowski will be challenged by Republican Thomas H. Kean Jr. this fall.
And today the Kentucky Republican Party stepped in and said the “threats” made by the Congressman must be denounced by leading Democrats in Kentucky.
The Malinowski camp claims the congressman was joking and anyone who overheard what he was saying knew he was joking. OK, but you have to think that Malinowski will approach the pandemic a little less smoothly in the future.
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